Best Buy is stating a Jan 2, 2007 release date for the long awaited Duke Nukem Forever. I think I was still in diapers when this game was initially announced. DN:Forever was supposed to be the sequel to the amazingly awesome ( at the time ) Duke Nukem 3D. Forever has been just that. The conventional wisdom was that the development would take forever and no one honestly ever believed that the game would see the light of day. Developer 3D Realms has always said that DN:Forever would be released "When it's done". After ten years "when it's done" seemed like never. Even the concept art looks dated not too mention the evolution of technology since 1996.

Is this game really coming out? Are any Duke Nukem 3D fans still alive?

uh huh... yeah... January 2nd.... Suuuuureeee.... Not gonna happen. And even if it is released, it could never possibly be good. The game would have to be like 100 hours long and be the best hundred hours of any game... ever.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

10 years of off-and-on development is a long time. And sets a high standard among some gamers. Others have all but given up on it.

Of course it's important to footnote that the Duke Nukem branding hasn't been dead this entire time, even if next "main game" has been missing. Just check out the Duke Nukem Gamegroup... lots of map addons, lots of ports to other systems...

For myself, the question isn't so much "is it coming out?" as "Do I even care?". Duke Nukem isn't the most appealing IP character in the world. He started out as a side-scrolling smiling guy with a gun fighting the mysterious Doctor Proton. Then donned sunglasses and fought random aliens. Moving to 3D, Duke Nukem was a silly FPS with some fun level design and objects (toilets, pool tables) and explosions... who spewed out quotes from Bruce Campbell and various movies... the aliens getting sillier then ever. On N64 and Playstation ports/sequels, it was more of the same. On GBA it went back to a side-scroller and continued with all the inconsistences.

So if the game comes out... Duke Nukem Forever might finally be released, but based on it's history I think it's safe to assume that whatever you might be thinking... it's going to be different.

The interaction, level design and humour made Duke 3D a special game for me, even though Quake already made it look outdated at the time. If they can improve on that, I'll buy it.

there's no way that the game is released in jan. The last we heard from DNF was an interview with Scott Miller on the NextGen Podcast ( http://podcast.next-gen.biz ) which also said, that they search new programmers and a few days before they searched a forum for "Environment Artists that can create "movie quality" assets" (http://www.kolbyjukes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1289). You don't need those if you're already 2 month away from release.

I'll buy the game when it comes out (have it on preorder since 2001) if it doesn't totally suck. Until then I'll have my fun with jokes about it :). As you can see with Prey and Team Fortress 2 - there can always be light on the end of the tunnel.

Yea, just like Twilight Princess was going to be released back in March...

Duke Nukem Whenever. :p




1. Duke didn't have sunglasses until the third game.
2. Most/all characters undergo changes from game to game (ie Lara Croft)
3. What do you mean by "inconsistancies"? They're difference games, damn it!


Obviously DNF isn't going to make a Jan release date, but the fact that 3DR is willing to shoot its mouth off like that is a good sign. The game must almost be done.

I actually feel sorry for 3DR. Even if Duke Nukem Forever comes out and is a good game, it will still have to bear the stigma of being in development for +10 and missing several release dates. Look at Daikatana. It was a good game by all accounts, but it's become one of gaming's biggest jokes because of it's development history.

Strange that you quoted me but did it in the wrong branch of the thread. Anyway:

1. Okay, I remembered wrong. I probably should have brought the game up on my screen.
2. Yeah, but Duke Nukem was portrayed as a badass in the 3rd game, whereas he spent the first game with a goofy grin on his face. Except for the name Duke Nukem and the blonde hair, there's nothing to really indicate they're the same character. Lara Croft is still roughly similar to her former self, though I admit lots of ignorance when talking about the Tomb Raider series.
3. Well... it's just that the "aliens" and level design are completely different from game to game. There's no real sense of knowing what's going on other than stuff explodes and the player controls a Mister Duke Nukem. It's just everything is completely different... and I understand that games change between different incarnations... but seldom so completely. Calling these a series is almost an insult to the idea of a coherently linked set of games.


Heh. Or maybe 3D Realms just has to keep reminding people that they exist. Still, I agree with you... it would be nice if they had more games completed on their mantle to show us that they're a viable development company. Like you say, all they have right now is a joke... a joke which continues to be funny at their expense. Wait and See... but if Duke Nukem 4 fails to please... what will 3D Realms' equivilent to Deus Ex be?

The 2001 E3 trailer still looked nice to me two years back, it seemed to have all the interaction from Duke Nukem 3D and the continous action I've gotten used to. Remember that they have changed engines several times so you can't really say they've been working on the same game that long. Obviously, it's not going to be released in January since we haven't heard a word from George Broussard.

I still believe 3D Realms pulling out a great game. Just look at all those Apogee games they made, can you recall even ONE below average game from Apogee, I know I can't.

For those of us who haven't seen what it looks like, I don't see how we can really make any judgments on the game yet. While it certainly IS taking them forever, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

@WK, I can see your point that there isn't much continuity between DN 1 and 2 and the rest of the series, but then it's not exactly a story-based series and the first two were kiddy sidescrollers, aimed at a completely different audience than Duke3D. After Duke3D the series has pretty much followed a pattern (read: boobs + gore) if not a story, and in my opinion the lack of continuity doesn't affect the series' appeal that much.




You're spot on. What's even more impressive is that 3DR continues to support and sell its older games (or even make them available for free, like BioMenace and Titanic). OK...maybe not that impressive, because if they didn't support their old games they wouldn't really have anything. :p

Well, since they still have Max Payne 2 selling, they don't really have the interest to work on another game, other than DNF. Also, George Broussard said that they made some mistakes with DNF so they had to restart from scratch several times, saying that they just want to finish the game. So it's not very likely to take too much longer, especially when the 10th anniversary of the game is just around the corner.

I think the reason they keep selling Max Payne 2 is because the stores put the prices so low. I once saw a new, still factory sealed Max Payne in my GameStop for a dollar and ninety-nine cents. I was able to buy it with a pocket change my friends gave me. To this date, still the cheapest game I ever bought.

Okay, its very off subject, but I thought it was a interesting story considering he brought the game up.

Best Buy's release date is just typical Duke Nukem Forever bullshit. Pardon my French, but that's really how I feel.

And yes, I still believe that DNF will be released sometime soon. After all, when we all thought that Prey would never be released, guess what happened?

Maybe, but keep in mind that Prey was a completely original product, in the case of DNF we are talking about resurrecting a franchise and fulfilling a lot of expectations...

Also, Prey ended up being a pretty crappy game too :P

According to Gamerankings Prey got an average of 83% across 56 media sources, and that's not bad. (Not that I think the opinions of "professional" reviewers are worth much, but still...)

I didn't think prey was that bad, but you can only get a kick of Doom 3 in so many incarnations before you are sick of it. Making the marine an Indian and putting him a maze of small intestines just didn't do it for me.

Does anybody have any links to any Duke Forever pics other than the really low quality PS1 looking ones I've found on the net?

http://www.duke4.net/ has screen caps of the E3 2001 trailer (they are the latest screens available), which obviously are outdated and invalid since they restarted the game from scratch in 2003. But I think you'd better of downloading the trailer to see that 3D Realms hasn't lost the touch.

Well, I am a DN fan, but not of the 'waiting in line all night' type. I figured DN Forever was vaporware many years ago.

It's really too late for the game, I don't care how good it is. Besides, Stonekeep was in development for 5 years and look how that one turned out :)

I got most of the Duke Nukem games (including the two PSX ones and Manhattan Project. Being a DN fan, I hope that this is true, and I hope that the game is miles ahead in development of what it was supposed to be ten years ago.