It might be easy to dismiss Duke Nukem 3D, a first person action videogame released twenty-one years ago, for its bizarre misogyny, or its flat cardboard cutout environments, or its hammy one-liners shamelessly ripped straight from popular B-movies like Evil Dead or They Live. It seems so desperate for cultural legitimacy and its players’ approval that it can be painful to look at with contemporary eyes.

The character of Duke Nukem was an ugly blank slate of profoundly idiotic, hyper-masculine nihilism — the only kind of character who had the stuff to go up against a hellish, dystopian world and win. That masculinity defined the future image of the gaming industry at large.

Duke Nukem 3D came from an era where video games were still trying to find their footing, both artistically and in the cultural landscape. Maybe this is why it’s so hard to figure out what the game actually wants to be: it’s a big, maximalist pile of jokes, references, and tropes that never really go in any coherent direction. References to the OJ Simpson trial and The Simpsons sit alongside a bunch of gratuitous porn and movie references with no clear purpose.