Duke Nukem Forever will return after all?

In the 1990′s Duke Nukem was one of my favorite game characters. The game was not that great – a quite futuristic and post-apocalyptic world invaded by aliens with flying machines and bad attitudes. It would have been just another shooter if there was no Duke in it. His remarks made the game a successful and memorable work.

With the appearance of new technologies, 3D Realms, the developer of the game, has decided to give the Duke another chance to fight aliens on our computers. They started to develop a new game – Duke Nukem Forever. The game was officially announced in 1997.

The first version of the game was based on the Quake engine. The plan was to release the game a year later, but the launch of iD Software’s new engine (Quake 2) it became obsolete before even reaching the beta phase. The company has switched to the Quake 2 engine, delaying the release of the game.

In 1998, Epic Games has released its Unreal Engine. It was more realistic than Quake 2, and handled open spaces much better, so 3D Realms has switched to it.

In 2003, five years later, the game was still not done. After some screenshots and trailers released to the public, the developers have pushed the release date even further, to “when it’s done”. After even more delays, the game was finally taken over by another company: Gearbox Software, responsible for titles like Half Life and Borderlands. The game is already said to be in the polishing stages. The distribution is said to be done by Take 2 Interactive.

Will the long wait finally end? We will see…