This is my first playthough of the first episode of "DUKE NUKEM 2 : DISPOSABLE HERO - APOGEE - BETA VERSION 1.4". The oldest possible known build date in the files is September 1993. Really late build of the game almost to final version. This prototype got recovered from a Warez BBS (ibm-wgam-wbiz-collection - the BBS IBM #145 wares tape) and publushed on the 7th of July 2024. A fantastic find!
Download link: dosgamert.com/duke2beta
Here's a list of differences that I noticed between the final of the game:
- Animated cutscene at the beginning is made with an EGA palette and got replaced with VGA artwork in the final.
- Main menu is made out of blue shiney metal plates. The hole main menu got a slight overhaul.
- Dynamite Explosives have an extra explosion in the middle, have a wider range and doesn't damage enemies or open up other crates.
- Spinning turrets can only be destroyed with rockets, not with the laser nor flamethrower.
- Some pickups are different, now you have joysticks and RAM-modules to collect too.
- Teleport sound effects are different.
- Sound effect for collecing the last NUKEM letter is less noticable.
- Flying TV's have different texts on them.
- Color of the scoreboard numbers at the end of a level is blue, instead of green.
- Flamethrower power-up is present in the second level. It's removed from the fourth level.
- Small level design changes like the rock below the ladder in the top middle of level 2.
- Some enemies take less damage to be killed, like the spiders.
- Shooting enemies that are on the same tile will damage them both instead of only just one. This way you can kill two spiders with one bullet.
- The birds on level 2 behave a bit different and will fly down towards you one tile left from you, and won't hit you by their attack. Giving you a more fair chance not to get hit by them.
- On level 3 and level 5 there's a mid-level checkpoint. They're completely different, they burst into electric red flames, touching them will kill you, preventing you to go back.
- If you try to land on the air-fans in level 5 you'll fall through, causing you to die (falling through the bottom of the level).
- The large Rigelatin-enemy protecting the base you need to enter cloaked on level 6 is absent.
- Cloaking power-up is also present in level 7.
- On the level 8 boss-stage, you can jump over the gap to the other side and get more pickups.
- Not entirely sure, but I think the boss takes more hits to kill.
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00:00:00 Notice
00:00:20 Intro
00:03:32 Menu & Information
00:06:10 Episode 1 - Level 1