Originally posted on Nerd Blerp on January 21, 2011
I can’t imagine there’s a person alive today that ISN’T aware of Duke Nukem, more specifically the legend that is Duke Nukem Forever. For those who don’t (who I’d imagine live in caves without internet — also, I’d be eager to know how exactly you’re reading this… stealing someone’s WiFi?), I’m about to hit you up with a history lesson:
In the early 90’s there was the beginning of a big boom in First Person Shooter games (which still sort of goes on today with games like Halo, Half-Life 2, and Call of Duty.) with games such as Wolfenstein and Doom. In 1997, a little company known at the time as Apogee (eventually renamed 3D Realms) threw their hat into the ring by revamping their 2D sidescroller Duke Nukem into its own FPS, thus making it one of the more (if not most) popular FPS’s of all time. I personally remember playing it on the computers at school… after hours, of course.
Shortly afterwards, 3D Realms announced a sequel to DN3D. I know I was jazzed myself to hear the news… I even remember reading about it in PC Gamer magazine. Since then, the game itself has essentially become the Chinese Democracy of video games. Since its original announcement in 1997, the game has been in limbo and dead more times than Jason from Friday the 13th. In the past couple of years, it was announced that 3D Realms was closing, which lead to a lawsuit from Duke Nukem’s publisher Take-Two (now 2K Games.)
In 2010, at PAX Prime in Seattle, it was announced that DNF was still in development, and that Gearbox Software (the people who developed the game Borderlands, and the Half Life 1 expansion packs Opposing Force and Blue Shift) were taking over development from the now dead 3D Realms.
It remains to be seen if Gearbox actually follows through with the May 3rd release date… for someone like myself who’s been made to wait for game releases, it’s definitely a wait and see attitude. There’s been plenty of footage in the past 10 years or so of different versions of the game… obviously one of the few reasons the game has taken so long is the changing technologies such as Epic’s Unreal Engine, Valve’s Source Engine, and iD’s Doom 3 (and eventually Doom 4) Engine. Hopefully Gearbox can succeed where 3D Realms failed, and get this game done and out so we can wait another 12 years or so for the next Duke Nukem.
Duke Nukem Forever will (allegedly) be available on May 3rd in the States (May 6th Internationally,) on PC, X-Box 360, and Playstation 3.
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