Duke Nukem is pretty much overhyped, I hate to say it
There was this nice comic, I think penny arcade or xkcd, that pointed out that the only really memorable thing about it might have been the strippers.
It didnt give us ANYTHING that other games havent given us before. Apart from strippers, and really immature mentality altogether, that was really well received by the average gamer demographic back then (mostly adolescent males, not geeky, beardy scientists anymore).
But strictly speaking, Duke Nukem 3D wasnt all that special.
edit; altough I have to admit, it was the first game in which I saw my avatar in a mirror. I think one of the first things I tried was to load up the level editor and place two mirrors in front of each other, which made the game crash, or something
Oh and again, something else comes to mind:
In my opinion Peter Molyneux games are something special. Even if that guy seems to turn into a smug bastard, that really likes to sniff his own farts. (Is that redundant?)
Even if some of his games didnt work out or werent well received, they mostly were innovative in one way or another, bordering on experimental or just being brave when it comes to their design. One day I discovered I enjoyed almost ALL the games he made, up to that point I didnt even realize he had been responsible for them. Let me just mention a few, could you guys REALLY tell me you didnt like most of them?
Lemme see... there was Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Hi-Octane (long before wipeout iirc), Magic Carpet, Flight Unlimited (supposedly the first "real" flight simulator, that calculated aerodynamics rather than look up plane behaviour in charts), Black and White 1. I would say "Theme Park", but to be honest, that's nothing more than "Sim City" with a few extra mechanics. Still, it was cool
I never played Fable, btw.