Duke Nukem II

Duke Nukem II

lethal-guitar/RigelEngine

Rigel Engine: a reimplementation of Duke Nukem II that replaces the original DOS executable. It reads the game’s data files and plays just like the original, but runs natively on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and can also be installed on the Steam Deck. It was made by reverse engineering, disassembling the original binary. All four episodes, from the shareware and registered versions, are fully playable and on par with the original. It adds a widescreen mode, smooth scrolling with a higher frame rate, quick saving, better controller support, and extended modding features. Its author considers it done: it’s in maintenance mode, with no new features planned. The complete reconstruction of the original code is a separate project, Duke2Reconstructed.

You needThe Duke Nukem II data files, from the registered version or the free shareware one: NUKEM2.CMP is enough, plus the optional intro movies (NUKEM2.F1 to F5). Plus a graphics card with OpenGL 3.0 or OpenGL ES 2.0.

Duke Nukem II

lethal-guitar/Duke2Reconstructed

A complete reconstruction of Duke Nukem II’s source code (Apogee Software, 1993) from the disassembly of the original executable, in commented C and assembly. It builds with era-appropriate tools, such as Borland C++, into a binary that’s byte-for-byte identical to the original after LZEXE compression. It was made by the author of Rigel Engine, the reimplementation for playing on modern systems that’s also in this catalog, building on the reverse engineering done for that project. It’s meant to document and preserve the code and to make modified versions that run on DOS; for playing on a modern PC, the author points to Rigel Engine. It includes no game data.