From out of the blue today, Apogee Software, otherwise known as 3D Realms, awoke from its long slumber with the promise that it was going to provide we players with a slew of content that would be drawn from previous series and titles, in addition to brand new titles. Right off the bat, Apogee is going to resurrect the sunglass-wearing, gun-wielding, smack-talking badass Duke Nukem back into the fray with an initial release for handheld consoles, dubbed the Duke Nukem Trilogy. The trilogy will be produced by Apogee Software under the terms of a license agreement that features 3D Realms and MachineWorks Northwest LLC as co-signers.

Terry Nagy, one of the founders of Apogee and its current COO, said that this was the beginning of a new chapter in the company’s history. “This marks a new beginning for a famous publisher with a history of market-making innovation,” Nagy said.

Duke Nukem aside, Apogee does have a long history of important innovations to the gaming market such as their idea, conceived in 1987, of offering game demos to the public online and the concept of releasing titles in an episodic style. Now, however, the concept of game demos is universal in the gaming market and the idea of episodic content has been picked up by such well known game series as Half Life 2 and the Sam & Max titles.

“Many of the things Apogee pioneered are back in style," said Scott Miller, another of Apogee’s co-founders, "so it only makes sense to bring back Apogee and its properties with a visionary team that will once again create innovation for gamers around the world.” What Mr. Miller says is true: a lot of what once was old is being reborn again in the gaming market in the forms of new/old titles currently in development such as Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, Ghostbusters, and Fallout 3.

You have to love that old retro feel.