Apogee Software, Ltd.

Apogee Software, Ltd. is a Texas Limited Partnership whose General Partner is Action Entertainment, Inc., a Texas Corporation.

Apogee's first breakthrough was in shareware marketing. Known in the shareware industry as the "Apogee model," the method of releasing a portion of a full game (an "episode") as shareware (years before the Internet became popular) was risky and innovative, and done well before other PC game publishers released demos of their games.

Among other innovations popularized by Apogee in early years include cheat codes (standard practice for their games as far back as in 1987), level warps and the so-called "god" invincibility mode. Apogee's games, and later 3D Realms' games, have always included skill levels and save/load game options, both rare in action games in the late 80's and early 90's.

Apogee is considered the founder and father of the local Dallas-area game development community, with most of the top developers in this area having strong connections to them. For example, id Software located there to have a closer working relationship with them during the development of Wolfenstein 3D. Ritual Entertainment was formed by several developers from Apogee. Ion Storm co-founder Tom Hall left 3D Realms to follow his dream of owning his own company where "Design is law." Many of their developers have also gone on to become key members at non-local companies, such as Valve and n-Space.

The Apogee label, for all purposes, was slated to be phased out after having been responsible for nearly 30 PC games, including Beyond the Titanic, Supernova, Kroz, Pharaoh's Tomb, Commander Keen, the original Duke Nukem in 1991, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Word Rescue, Math Rescue, Wolfenstein 3-D, Blake Stone, Raptor, Wacky Wheels, Rise of the Triad, Death Rally and Stargunner.

In 2008 the Apogee name, logo, and library were licensed to a separate company - Apogee Software, LLC.

In early March 2014 the company, along with the name 3D Realms, were sold to the Danish company Interceptor Entertainment ApS. Apogee previously worked together with Interceptor.