Before 3D Realms there was Apogee - the name and logo MS-DOS gamers saw when they fired up the original Duke Nukem, Commander Keen, Rise of the Triad, Wolfenstein 3D, and many more. And now the name is back with company founder Scott Miller at the helm and a renewed focus on publishing indie games.

Which was basically the PC game scene back when the company was at its peak, releasing Shareware demos and offering mail-order services for full titles created by small independent studios like id Software. Apogee would go on to become 3D Realms, which we all know cut its teeth with the seminal Duke Nukem 3D, with Miller obtaining the rights to the Apogee name from the long-running publisher and studio.



"We decided here in the last year to resurrect and relaunch Apogee, to kind of reclaim our title as the original indie publisher," Miller says in an interview with gamesindustry.biz. "We're working with indie developers again and cherry picking what we think are the diamonds in the rough. And there are a lot of diamonds out there."

In terms of what Apogee will offer, this will be funding, marketing, PR services, porting, QA, localisation, and other duties associated with the publisher tag. Miller notes that Apogee won't simply be a retro label looking to tap into the pixel-heavy market, but that it will pick up where it left off -- publishing titles across a wide range of genres and working with developers to get new and original visions out there.