Duke Nukem Forever: From Vaporware to Almost There

Well for those of you not clued into the development history of Duke Nukem Forever I am going to start with a brief outline of its absurdly long development time. So far it only really stands as a multi award winning Vaporware product, that has been in production since its first announcement in April 1997 right up until an already delayed 2011 release. During the 12 year period between 1997 - 2009 3D Realms kept Duke Nukem Forever alive by feeding its fans various different promotional information. The downsizing of 3D Realms that occured in May of 2009 resulted in the loss of the games development team. This blow spoke with certainty that Duke Nukem Forever was destined to enter the gaming graveyard leaving a 12 year long series of false expectations in its wake.

However, we all know that even apparent death would not stop the Duke and riding bareback on the lawsuit between Take-Two Interactive and 3D Realms the Duke Nukem Forever project was resurrected. In 2009 Gearbox Software begun development of Duke Nukem Forever and amidst much expected skepticism the game has been finally made. The following demonstration of the game validates its existence and not only that it also looks damn sexy.

Originally the game was set for a May 6th international release, but this has just been stretched out to June 10th. Obviously there is still some slight polishing to be done and I guess this kind of waiting is fairly moderate in comparison to its previous developers severely protracted development schedule. Either way on first impressions this is Duke at his best and there are plenty of tasty references to Duke Nukem 3D throughout. This combined with the return of Jon St. John as the voice of the Duke makes this a must buy opiate of nostalgia.

So for fans and all you regular Johns we recommend you dust off your jetpack digits and get your misogyny-loving mits on a copy of Duke Nukem Forever when it comes out on June 10th (don't be surprised if there is another delay though). Until then, "hail to the king, baby!"