Scott Miller had been making games since 1975. Some of Millers early games had been The Computer Quiz, Astronomy Quiz, and BASIC Quiz. Later he started to make more complex games such as 'Kingdom of Kroz'. In that game the player had to collect gems, and avoid monsters. When a monster touched you the player would lose one of his gems. The player also had a whip attack they could use a limited number of times as a defence. The whip could also be used to break down walls that sometimes blocked an exit. The game had a focus on conservation of gems and whips as part of the strategy. Kingdom of Kroz remake footage from the Cruz engine.


The Computer Quiz - Scott Miller

While Millers earliest games had used a donation model whereby gamers could download the entire game for free and then choose to donate money. His later games like 'Kingdom of Kroz' would start to use the shareware model whereby gamers could get some of the games levels for free, but to get the rest they would have to pay. Scott Miller made a series of Kroz games and he started to make a lot of money from them using the shareware model. His games was distributed on BBS boards and gamers would get a message pop up on screen after they finished the shareware version of his game offering them more content for a price and giving them an 800 number to call.
Millers shareware games proved very successful. Kingdom of Kroz was one of Millers first games to be credited under his company name 'Apogee software productions'.As the 1980's started to draw to a close a new game was in development at Apogee software. This game was called 'Metal Force' and it had a protagonist in the game called 'Duke Nukem'.

Working on the game was Todd Replogle, Alen H Blum III, George Broussard & Jim Norwood. With Scott Miller acting as boss & producer. It was Millers decision to change the games name from 'Metal Force' to that of it's hero: Duke Nukem. Millers team collaborated to define Dukes character. They took inspiration from comic book heroes and 1980's action movie stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Duke Nukem was a typical side scrolling action game, similar to many titles that where available on the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game released in 1991. It could only scroll by shifting 8x8 blocks. Unlike Id software's 1990 game 'Commander Keen' which had parallax scrolling. Both Commander Keen and Duke Nukem were distributed through Scott Millers company: apogee, as Shareware.

The games story was simple: you had to stop the evil Dr Proton and his army of 'techbots' from taking over the world. In the game you had only one weapon: the 'atomic pistol' however it could be upgraded using the in game pickups to have a faster firing rate. There where also boot and health pickups throughout the game that you could usually find by destroying coloured boxes.
The actual level design was good for the time because it allowed the player to take multiple routes to the same exit. There was room for exploration, and the game play itself was very fast.
After the release of the game the team learned that there was a cartoon show called 'Captain Planet' and in that cartoon there was a character called 'Duke Nukem'. To avoid legal trouble the 2nd release of the game was renamed 'Duke Nukum'. Despite this Duke Nukem sold well. The game implemented Millers philosophy: that is, if you create a good character there is no end to the stories you could tell using that character. This philosophy would work well for Apogee, as Duke Nukem would receive numerous sequels over the coming years.