Apogee

Apogee History

Apogee started in 1987 with the release of Scott Miller’s Kingdom of Kroz, which used crude extended ASCII characters as graphics. Nevertheless, the game sold quite well and Apogee was born. In 1991 George Broussard joined the company as co-owner, bringing with him several games of his that were previously released under the name Micro F/X. Miller and Broussard run the company to this day.

Apogee published games by other developers in addition to its own in-house titles. One of these developers, id Software, contributed to Apogee’s success with games such as Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D, but later severed their ties with Apogee with their release of Doom in 1993 (although in its earliest stages, Doom was still an Apogee title).

3D Realms (legal name Apogee Software, Ltd.) is the name of a video and computer game producer, publisher, and developer based in Garland, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, established in 1987. It is best known for popularizing the shareware distribution model and as the creator of franchises on the PC such as Duke Nukem, and also the publisher of other franchises such as Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D.

While the company is now known as “3D Realms”, the legal name of the company is still Apogee Software, Ltd. The name “3D Realms” was initially created as a branding label in July 1994 for use by Apogee which would be dedicated to just 3D games (as Apogee was then known for several styles of games). However, shortly after this, 3D games started to dominate the industry, and Apogee decided to direct their focus on this style of game, and as such, the Apogee name was eventually abandoned as a public marketing name in late 1996. In July 2008, however, they announced that the brand Apogee Software will be revived with new games, but licenced to an external company, Apogee Software, LLC.

Apogee

Since 1987, Apogee Software has been a multifaceted pioneer and innovator in the PC gaming industry. Apogee’s first breakthrough was in shareware marketing. Known in the shareware industry as the “Apogee model”, our breakthrough method of releasing a portion of a full game (an “episode”) as shareware (years before the Internet became popular) was risky and innovative, and done well before other PC game publishers released demos of their games — now standard practice.

Among other innovations popularized by Apogee in our early years include cheat codes (standard practice for our games as far back as in 1987), level warps and the so-called “god” invincibility mode. Apogee’s games, have always included skill levels and save/load game options, both very rare in PC games in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

Apogee is considered the founder and original champion of the independent game developer. Apogee nurtured some of today’s powerhouse developers, including id Software who relocated to Dallas have a closer working relationship with us during the development of Wolfenstein 3-D.

In 1994 Apogee created a new division, 3D Realms Entertainment, with the goal of developing innovative, interactive, immersive and of course fun 3D action games.

After a 13 year absence, Apogee Software is “Back in Action” as a publisher will continue its proud tradition of bringing top quality PC games direct to the consumer via digital distribution while at the same time expanding its publication muscle into next generation consoles.

Apogee Software, LLC, is a privately held Texas limited liability company, with a core team of industry experts in game development, publishing, and distribution. Apogee publishes original content for retail distribution of games for the PC and next generation consoles and handhelds.