Cleaned-Up Duke Nukem 64 Loses Some of the Fun of the Original

Let me get this straight: Duke Nukem without all the risque stuff?

What’s the point?

Given Nintendo’s content standards, there was no way the company would allow Duke on its 64-bit machine without a few trims to clean up the game’s adult material, such as environments featuring strippers and dirty bookstores.

While that’s clearly the right thing to do before unleashing the game on Nintendo 64’s younger players, it turns the classic PC blastfest into just another first-person corridor shooter--however nice it may be.

GT Interactive’s Duke Nukem 64 delivers all the action and attitude fans expect. Environments rip into view and because the N64 uses cartridges, load times between levels are nonexistent. With the Rumble Pak peripheral, players can actually feel the sting of alien firepower. Head-to-head mode allows players to chase friends down and blow them into oblivion in a fast-paced challenge that may be the best part of the game.

All of this is to say that Duke Nukem 64 is a perfectly passable shooter. It’s just not Duke Nukem. The original was so fun because it incorporated plenty of kitschy seaminess into play. There was never anything pornographic. In fact, most scenes were squarely PG as players wandered through the seedy side of a digital town. In a world of sterile shooters, Duke stood out for being bad--and proud of it.

But on Nintendo, the dirty bookstores have been replaced with gunshops and the bars with burger joints. Still around, though, are the giant warthogs in LAPD jackets. So it must be OK for kids to shoot at thinly veiled police officers, but not to look at women in bikinis.

Go figure. True fans of corridor shooters should like Duke Nukem 64, but true fans of Duke should steer clear. It shares the name and not much else.

Sonic R: Hits have been few and far between lately on Sega’s flagging Saturn. Don’t look to Sega’s heavily hyped Sonic R to turn the machine’s fortunes around. Ostensibly a racer,Sonic R is a three-dimensional trip through some beautiful environments in search of a game.

Even with Sega’s handy 3-D joypad, control is squishy, which makes navigating the twisting courses frustrating. Despite some gorgeous scenery, great music and sweet graphics, the control problem overwhelms Sonic R and makes it more trouble than it’s worth.

Pity. Sega could use a boost.

Pandemonium 2: Few early PlayStation games struck me the way Pandemonium did. A beautiful side-scroller that twisted and dived in every direction, the Crystal Dynamics classic was a hoot. The style and speed of the original lives on this sequel from Crystal and Midway. Players jump and run through some crazy worlds that slip onto the screen without a hitch. It’s clean and simple fun.

Staff writer Aaron Curtiss reviews video games every other Thursday. To comment on a column or to suggest games for review, send letters to The Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311. Or send e-mail to Aaron.Curtiss@latimes.com.