Sadly ol' Duke hasn't left that era as Duke Nukem Forever has been in development since April of 1997.

How much ass would it have kicked?

Unfortunately for Duke Nukem Forever, its endless delays have rendered it a bit of a laughing stock. Is it a practical joke by the developers? Or are they using the game as a front to launder money for the mob? And most importantly, why do people still care?

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The reason is that the makers of Duke Nukem, 3D Realms, have a long and impressive track history. As developers and publishers these guys had a huge hand in creating the entire first-person shooter genre, and their recent games have ranged from good to excellent. If you want a game where you blow some shit up real good, these guys can deliver. And the Duke Nukem games weren't bad in their day.

Also, these days Duke would be free to be the towering monument to juvenile humor in a way that he couldn't 10 years ago. Don't the 12-year-olds of today (or those still 12-years-old at heart) deserve this?

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So is there any chance it'll come out?

3D Realms seem to be stuck in some sort of time paradox where the more work they put into the game, the further it gets from being finished. Here's a trailer from 1998 ...

Holy shit! Actual gameplay and plenty of it too! Hell, this game looks near completion and by 1998 standards, pretty damn good. Let's move onto 2001 and another trailer for the game.

While it provided the splattered grey matter and blow-up doll women Duke Nukem connoisseurs demand, this trailer appears to be made up almost entirely of cut scenes with little actual gameplay on display. What happened?

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Now let's flash forward six years to a 2007 trailer:

Say goodbye to gameplay or even cutscene footage, say hello to a pre-rendered movie of Duke sitting on his ass amidst a black featureless expanse lifting a dumbbell. A rather girlishly small dumbbell at that.

If 3D Realms doesn't manage to escape this backwards paradox, by next year all they'll have is concept art. By 2010 if someone asks them about Duke Nukem Forever, they'll scratch their heads in bewilderment, then demand to know what a "Duke Nukem" is and why retarded people were allowed to name it.

Nathan Birch also writes the always promptly updated webcomic Zoology.

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