Chris Kline is an American artist/musician best known as "Vertexguy" or the "Vertex Guy". His artwork and music is present in several video games spanning more than a dozen titles across several console and PC platforms. His guitar renditions of classic video game songs have also been performed live at award shows and in concert with Video Games Live.[1]
Chris Kline's musical influences started from his parents, David and Mary Ellen Kline, who first met in a rock and roll band. David Kline was a drummer and encouraged his son to pick up the drums around the age of 5. Kline stuck with the drums through high school, but also tried out a few other instruments along the way, such as the violin and the guitar. In middle school, Kline joined band and quickly excelled to first chair drummer. He performed in competition Jazz band and performed drum solos at band concerts in front of the entire school.[1]
Around this time, Kline also became interested in learning the guitar. He started out on his father's old acoustic guitar trying to play songs like "Enter Sandman" and "The Unforgiven" made popular by Metallica. Soon after this, he got his first electric guitar. Kline was largely influenced by heavy metal, rock and progressive rock bands of the 1980s and had a hard time finding any instructors interested in the same genres. He started by taking a few lessons here and there, but ended up quitting and teaching himself along the way. During this time, he developed his musical ear to a very high level enabling him to pick up new songs very quickly.[1]
Around this time, he also was heavily influenced by the video game industry and took a strong liking to the Nintendo Entertainment System. He had a passion for art and music and had been conjuring up his own game designs since the NES made its first United States debut in 1985. With the help of AOL, he went online and began searching for other like-minded individuals wanting to try to make their own video game. In the process, he formed the company known as "Nuke Ware".[2] He pursued a few different game designs under this company, and with the help of DarkSoft Entertainment, successfully co-published his first title, Empires: Quest for Power on the Excalibur BBS.[1]
Not long after this, Kline graduated from Yankton High School and went off to college. He applied and was accepted into the Art Institute of Phoenix. He began pursuing the nation's first Bachelor of Arts in Game Art & Design. In college, Kline excelled in all subjects and made the Deans Honor Roll.[3]
During his early college years, Kline joined his first official band, "Universal Tongue". Kline toured the local bar scenes with them performing lead / rhythm guitar on original and popular cover songs. Kline's involvement with the band lasted about a year. Shortly after Kline left, the band began falling apart and is now non existent.[4]
Chris Kline performing Contra: Jungle Jam at Video Games Live, Game Developers Conference 2007.
Towards the final year of college, Kline realized he would need to create a website for his online portfolio. He wanted the address to be memorable and make sense with the type of work he did. Since 3D art is made up of vertices at its core level, and this is what he spends his time manipulating every day, Kline thought it would be catchy to call himself "VertexGuy". Kline usually lumps the two words together to match his website address (www.vertexguy.com), but can often be found referenced as "the vertex guy", "vertex guy", "vertex" or "vert". He prefers treating the title as one word because it is unique enough to make him instantly easy to find in any search engine.[5]
After graduating from college in 2002, Kline moved to Prescott, Arizona to be with his girlfriend, Trina Noelle Cowin, who would soon become his wife. During this time, Kline worked on his art portfolio and began applying to game studios across the United States. Knowing he needed a job to get married, Kline jumped on the first major opportunity that came his way. This came in the form of a job offer from FarSight Studios.[6]
During his time at FarSight Studios, Kline quickly adapted and assumed a natural leadership role, taking on a great deal of responsibility. In addition to creating artwork for all the games the studio worked on, he also became the studio's AudioDirector. He created all the sound effects for the studio's game line up and also wrote a few music scores.[1]
In 2005, Kline joined www.MusicianWar.com and began posting original compositions in friendly music competition. This site features categories to compete in and the one that caught Kline's attention the most was "Video Game Themes". Though this did not seem to be a very popular category, Kline began posting guitar renditions of various classic video game themes. Shortly after, he decided to take one of the game themes he covered (John Petrucci’s Necronomicon: Epiloque) and post it on YouTube. Not long after, he followed it up with his remake of the original level 1 music from the NES title, Contra. This release proved to be a huge hit and spawned much media attention from various gaming sites. Since then, he has been interviewed and discussed on several major gaming sites, including Kotaku and Destructoid.[7][8][9]
On June 28, 2006, Kline's rendition of the Duke Nukem theme, titled "Duke Nukem Jam", was presented on 3D Realms' front page (www.3dRealms.com). This helped expose Kline to new listeners, who immediately became die hard fans of his work.[10] Since then, his video on YouTube has had more than a million views, in addition to millions of total views spanning across all his videos.[11] Chris was later contracted by 3D Realms and Apogee for use of his Duke Nukem Jam in their promotional trailer videos created for Duke Nukem 3d on Xbox Live and the Duke Nukem Trilogy trailer for PSP.[1]
Tommy Tallarico introducing Chris Kline at Video Games Live, Game Developers Conference 2007.
After Contra made its popular debut across the web, a fellow MySpace user named "Stretch" contacted Kline and suggested that he contact Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall from Video Games Live to see if they might be interested in doing something together.[6] Kline took him up on this advice and soon after was invited to perform with Video Games Live at the Game Developers Conference in 2007. He also performed at the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) Awards show during the conference.[12] Since then, Kline has performed with Video Games Live at the E4All Expo in 2007,[13] and in Loveland, CO in 2009.[11]
Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by 3D Realms. It is a sequel to the platform games Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II, published by 3D Realms.
Duke Nukem Forever is a 2011 first-person shooter game developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K for Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Mac OS X. It is the fourth main installment in the Duke Nukem series and the sequel to Duke Nukem 3D (1996). Players control Duke Nukem as he comes out of retirement to battle an alien invasion. Like its predecessor, Duke Nukem Forever features pop culture references, toilet humor, and adult content.
Apogee Entertainment, formerly Apogee Software, LLC, is an American video game publisher based in Rowlett, Texas. The company was founded by Terry Nagy in 2008 after he licensed the rights to the name and logo from Scott Miller and his company, 3D Realms, which had used both previously. After reorganizing as Apogee Entertainment in 2021, it hired Miller for its publishing operations.
3D Realms Entertainment ApS is a video game publisher based in Aalborg, Denmark. Scott Miller founded the company in his parents' home in Garland, Texas, in 1987 as Apogee Software Productions to release his game Kingdom of Kroz. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the company popularized a distribution model where each game consists of three episodes, with the first given away free as shareware and the other two available for purchase. Duke Nukem was a major franchise created by Apogee to use this model, and Apogee published Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D the same way.
The Build Engine is a first-person shooter engine created by Ken Silverman, author of Ken's Labyrinth, for 3D Realms. Like the Doom engine, the Build Engine represents its world on a two-dimensional grid using closed 2D shapes called sectors, and uses simple flat objects called sprites to populate the world geometry with objects.
Gearbox Software, L.L.C is an American video game development company based in Frisco, Texas. It was established as a limited liability company in February 1999 by five developers formerly of Rebel Boat Rocker. Randy Pitchford, one of the founders, serves as president and chief executive officer. Gearbox initially created expansions for the Valve game Half-Life, then ported that game and others to console platforms. In 2005, Gearbox launched its first independent set of games, Brothers in Arms, on console and mobile devices. It became their flagship franchise and spun off a comic book series, television documentary, books, and action figures. Their second original game series, Borderlands, commenced in 2009, and by 2015 had sold over 26 million copies. The company also owns the intellectual property of Duke Nukem and Homeworld.
Duke Nukem is a 1991 platform game developed and published by Apogee Software for MS-DOS. The 2D, multidirectional scrolling game follows the adventures of fictional character Duke Nukem across three episodes of ten levels each. The game's first episode was distributed as shareware. The name was briefly changed to Duke Nukum to avoid trademark issues.
Balls of Steel is a pinball computer game developed by Wildfire Studios and released on December 12, 1997. It is the only game to be published under the Pinball Wizards label, a division of Apogee Software.
D3 Publisher Inc. is a Japanese video game developer and publisher founded on February 5, 1992. The company is known for the Simple series of budget-priced video games. Their games have been released for the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, GameCube, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii U, Android, and iOS.
George Broussard is an American video game producer and designer. He is one of the creators of the Duke Nukem series, along with Todd Replogle, Allen Blum, and Scott Miller.
Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection is a pinball video game developed by FarSight Studios and published by Crave Entertainment for Wii, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, and Nintendo 3DS. Players play on a variety of classic virtual pinball machines from Williams Electronics' history. The Williams Collection follows the previous title, Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection.
Zynga Eugene is an American video game developer based in Eugene, Oregon. The company was founded as Buzz Monkey Software in late 2001 by four former Dynamix employees: senior producer Randy Thompson, senior engineers Jon Milnes and Steve Cordon, and lead artist Barry Drew.
Keiichi Yano is a Tokyo-based video game designer and musician responsible for a number of music video game titles including his most famous game, the 2002 cult video game, Gitaroo Man. Yano has been involved in music from a young age and he earned a major in jazz studies at the University of Southern California. He has spent time playing saxophone in Tokyo jazz clubs.
Duke Nukem is a media franchise named for its main character, Duke Nukem. Created by the company Apogee Software Ltd. as a series of video games for personal computers, the series expanded to games released for various consoles by third-party developers. The first two games in the main series were 2D platformers, while the later games have been a mix of first-person and third-person shooters.
Duke Nukem is a fictional character and protagonist of the Duke Nukem video game series. The character first appeared in the 1991 video game Duke Nukem, developed by Apogee Software. He has since appeared in multiple sequels and spin-offs, as well appearing in various games not in the series. Most recently, he starred in Duke Nukem Forever, released by Gearbox Software, which now owns the intellectual property rights to the series and the character.
Lee Jackson is an American composer. He was the music and sound director for the video game developer 3D Realms from 1994 through 2002.
Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded is a suspended first-person shooter fan project. The title was announced on the Gearbox forums on October 13, 2010 and is based on the Duke Nukem series. The game was intended to be a next generation reimagining of the 1996 game Duke Nukem 3D.
A number of adventure/rhythm video games based on the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana and the film have been released. All the games were published by Buena Vista Games / Disney Interactive Studios.
The video game Duke Nukem Forever spent more than 14 years in development, from 1997 to 2011. It is a first-person shooter for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, developed by 3D Realms, Triptych Games, Gearbox Software and Piranha Games. It is the sequel to the 1996 game Duke Nukem 3D, as part of the long-running Duke Nukem video game series. Intended to be groundbreaking, it became an infamous example of vaporware due to its severely protracted development schedule. Director George Broussard, one of the creators of the original Duke Nukem game, announced the development in 1997, and promotional information for the game was released from 1997 until its release in 2011.
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