Duke Nukem 3D v0.99 Beta: E1L4 Toxic Beach Head

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Published on February 11, 2025 2:52:17 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qel0FMOFtCg

Game:

THE FINALS (2023)

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About this video:
This footage comes from the leaked prototype dated January 4, 1996, which is free to download. The leak was only a shareware version, so only the first episode and 6 of the weapons are included.
This video shows gameplay on "Headache" difficulty. There are 5 difficulty settings: Easy, Medium, Normal, Hard, and Headache. Enemies respawn on the last two difficulties, and cheats are allowed on all difficulties.
Cheats were used. This footage is just meant to showcase the prototype.
Key bindings can be changed, but the modern WASD control scheme doesn't seem to work correctly. (Sorry for the janky movement and random jumping!)

Notes on Toxic Beach Head:
This version of the level starts near the shrink ray that fires at the player. This was probably an oversight by the developers; keeping the player's starting position here was probably meant to make it easier for the designer while working on this part of the map. As can be seen in the footage when Duke is shrunk, the small tunnels have not yet been finished, so the developer was clearly working on it at the time of this build. The designer probably just forgot to change the starting position before mailing this copy to the reviewer who leaked it.
In the video, the dnclip cheat is used to get inside the sunken submarine.
In the above-ground caverns around the sunken submarine, green droplets can be seen sticking to the ceiling. These are supposed to drip in the final game, but their animations have not yet been programmed.
The Scuba Gear uses a first-person sprite that is much larger and more obstructive than in the final game.
When using cheats, running out of ammo with any weapon allows you to use the Shrinker, though the first-person weapon sprite is not shown.
One secret was missed in the video: there is an Atomic Health at the top of the green waterfall of toxic waste in the outdoor canyon. This is not counted as a secret in the final game.
As shown in the video, there is an out-of-bounds area in this version that can be accessed without even using cheats. After passing through the spinning yellow cylindrical gears and emerging into the room with the giant converging waterfalls, you can see there is a room at the top of the other waterfall that can be reached with the Jetpack. Similar to the final version, there is a teleporter in this room that takes you to another room with water running through it. However, unlike the final game, this room is impossible to reach any other way. It has been noted that this room actually sits in a position out-of-bounds with respect to the sewer tunnel at the end of the level such that it seems to align with the secret area above the waterfall from M1 in LameDuke. Even though the sewer tunnel has dramatically evolved from M1, it looks like it may in fact be the same area that was once an underpass at the beginning of M1 in LameDuke. By itself, the sewer tunnel carries a few subtle clues that point to this possibility (the shape, similar total length, location of waterfalls, lighting that aligns with overhead bridges), but the dimensions of the tunnel have changed too much to lend much credence to this theory. That's why the location of the room out-of-bounds is so significant; it provides much stronger evidence for the tunnel's connection to M1. (Note that the tunnel was merely copied-and-pasted onto this map; Toxic Dump actually appears to have been iterated from N6, not M1.)
Although easily overlooked, there are a few changes to the sewer tunnel at the end of the map: The parts with darker edges were lengthened in the final version, and one of the waterfalls pouring into the tunnel was removed.
Even though the level-end screen says "Into the Abyss", this level is titled "Toxic Beach Head", as can be seen for a few frames at the beginning of the video. This glitch is probably related to the use of the dnwarp cheat.