My Inspiration for The Thousand Years War Series
Article By: Angel Ramon Medina
As you can see above, this is my new cover for the first book of The Thousand Years War Series! I'm also happy to report that after this makeover of the cover, I have also cleaned up the inside as well and it's already making a positive difference in sales and reviews!
So in celebration, I decided to write about what inspired me to write The Thousand Years War Series and NO, the series is not done! It's just on a hiatus, but a new book is coming out as you may well know.
However, you want to know, what inspired me to write such an epic sci-fi/video game adaption series. Well if you guessed video games, then you would be absolutely correct! However, unless you had a PC or lucky enough to play the N64 port of one of the games, then you might not have heard of the Duke Nukem series. Yes, I'm a total geek for PC gaming and retro gaming specifically.
I grew up with video games you can say as I was lucky enough to have a PC and a gaming console, not to mention I was the only child in my family. I was a sci-fi buff growing up and I had a love affair and I still do lol on a particular game called Duke Nukem 3D. I also had the pleasure of playing it on the Nintendo 64 as well. I thought I would take the kick-ass Duke Nukem because he is one bad ass mofo (If you haven't played it, it's on steam for like $20. Go buy it and play it!) and make my own story out of it using my own twists of course!
So you might be asking, you said "Duke Nukem Series", what series?
Well, to be honest, Duke Nukem 3D is the most popular of the series, besides the crummy, Duke Nukem Forever that I had the displeasure of wasting $40 a couple of years ago. So let's go over the first three titles that took over my childhood!
Duke Nukem I
I won't bore you with too many details about the story, all I will say is that this was a PC exclusive. Not sure if it's downloadable from Steam, but if you can, do it! It's your average 2D side-scroller/platformer, but you get some cool weapons and you get to Alien-Bust! It was published by Apogee Software, who made some of the best FPS shooters in the early to mid 90's. The graphics aren't impressive for today's time, but for a game that ran on DOS, it's an enjoyable time waster! This is before Duke gets his catchphrases and his kick-ass attitude.
Duke Nukem II
This is the second installment of the series and as you can see by the screenshots, with much-improved graphics. I will say this installment of the series is balls hard! So prepare for lots of deaths and yes cheap ones as well. This is my favorite of the side-scrollers of the series. This is also a PC exclusive and it ran on DOS. I believe you can cop yourself a copy for only $5 on Steam.
Duke Nukem 3D
Here is easily the most popular of the Duke Nukem series! The one that all of us nerds talk about when we talk about the series! It's the one that is mostly customized and modded. This is where Duke Nukem gets his catchphrases such as "Time to kick ass and chew bubblegum and I'm all out of gum!" and "Damn those aliens bastards are going to pay for shooting up my ride!" It's where the series made it's transition from 2D to 3D and became one of the greatest FPS shooters. It became an iconic game in the 90's and one that was exclusive to the PC until ports for the N64, Sega Saturn and Playstation one were created. This is the one where a good amount of my ideas were inspired from and it's expansion pack, "Life's a Beach" is my inspiration for my next book, which will be mine LitRPG spinoff. I say if you want to get into the series, this is easily the one I recommend.
While there are more than just these three, but this was my childhood so I'll keep it there. Now I think I'll play a game of Duke just for shits and giggles!