Duke 3D Prototype (Early November 1995): Hollywood Holocaust on Cyber Flash

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DN Stuff

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Published on June 3, 2025 1:50:15 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2kYciFMVec

Game:

Duke Nukem 3D (1996)

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This footage comes from Cyber Flash (sometimes written as "Cyberflash"), a poorly documented French TV series that aired on the Canal+ channel from 1995 to 1997. Helpful information about the show is severely lacking, but in the sources I found, this episode is variously identified as "Vidéo 06" (I'm not sure what that means) or "Numéro 96" of the 1996 season. Assuming that means this is episode 96 of the 1996 season, I believe this episode aired on May 14, 1996. That date aligns pretty well with the commercial release of Duke Nukem 3D, so I'm inclined to believe it.

Each episode of the show is only ~7 minutes, so I think this was some sort of filler program like you might see today on Adult Swim. That probably explains why it's so poorly documented.

The entire episode is devoted to Duke Nukem 3D, but almost all of it is footage from the official shareware release (i.e., it only shows maps from L.A. Meltdown, and it uses the beta sprite for the switch in the projector room of the movie theater on Hollywood Holocaust, though the maps themselves are identical to the commercial version).

However, roughly 20 seconds of the episode show footage from a prototype that can be dated to sometime between November 1 and November 18, 1995. The rationale for that dating is slightly complicated. Basically, someone with privileged access to development files, Richard "Terminx" Gobeille, shared screenshots from a build that he said came from November 1995, but that build used a HUD that clearly post-dated a HUD seen in pre-release screenshots that were directly posted to the developers' website on November 18, 1995, meaning Gobeille's build could be dated to sometime between November 19 and November 30, 1995. Gobeille subsequently shared map schematics from a build that he said was two weeks older than the build he had shared previously, and those map schematics have been matched to first-person screenshots that show the same HUD as the one in this video. The HUD in this video clearly pre-dates the HUD seen in the November 18 screenshots. It is possible but unlikely that this HUD pre-dates November; there are literally three more HUDs that can be confidently dated to sometime between September 22, 1995 and whenever the footage in this video was captured.

I was able to find three recordings of this episode scattered across the web, but it is surprisingly difficult to tell whether the three recordings are independent of one another. In any case, I picked the highest quality recording of the three and extracted the 20 seconds of prototype footage using LosslessCut, retaining the quality of the original recording without lossy recompression.

All scenes in this footage come from E1L1, Hollywood Holocaust. The first two scenes show the entrance to the women's restroom, facing the same direction. The third and fourth scenes show the inside of the scrapped men's restroom, facing opposite directions (If you're confused by the men's restroom, you should definitely checkout the "Duke Nukem 3D prototypes" article on the Duke Nukem Wiki). The final scene shows the beta Shotgun and part of the outdoor street that was cut from the final game. As of writing, this is the only known beta video to show this particular version of the Shotgun, though numerous beta screenshots are also available.

You can find a lot more information, including screenshots and video footage, in the "Duke Nukem 3D prototypes" article on the Duke Nukem Wiki.

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