Rad Rodgers is coming to Switch with friends in tow

Duke Nukem might finally have another good game

3D Realms has announced that indie sidescroller Rad Rodgers will be coming to Switch on February 26. The port to Nintendo’s platform will include local co-op support, new characters, and a versus mode. Along with some original characters (like Evil Rodgers), icons like Duke Nukem, Lo Wang and Shelly Bombshell (from Ion Maiden) will be playable.

Co-owner of 3D Realms, Frederik Schreiber, said, “We love Rad, and we thought he deserved some awesome new friends to play with. With new levels, weapons, couch co-op and a versus mode, I think our fans may have a hard time putting this game down.” If you already own Rad Rodgers on PC, PS4 or Xbox One, all this new content will be available as a free update on the same day as the Switch version’s launch.

Rad Rodgers is a very strange case for me. I had some fun with the initial episodic launch, but then the full release came out and the game felt worse in nearly every respect. A 1.5 patch came out a few weeks later and was a dramatic improvement, making the game feel a lot more like its initial launch in early-access. Since then, it’s been slightly improved and tweaked to become a pretty decent retro side-scroller.

I’m not sure that co-op would completely change the experience, but having classic 3D Realms characters is a really nice gesture. I’ll have to see how the multiplayer mode turns out, especially with Duke now selectable.