The long running trend of killing zombies and aliens never seems to fade away. And when we look back at the history of shoot and loot games, Duke Nukem 3D appears to be one of the games that laid the foundation of this genre and not only that, it became insanely popular amongst the kids of that generation.
Duke Nukem 3D was the third game in the Duke Nukem series and the very first 3D game that built up on the same infamous story and formula that made the earlier games in the franchise a major hit. With players already eyeing the series’ upcoming hit, Duke Nukem 3D became a major hit in the gaming industry, selling over a whopping 3.5 million copies in the US alone.
It was so insane that it ended with a bizarre ending, where Nuke literally pulls out the eye of a big alien monster that he kills right in the center of a football field, out of all places and kicks it into the goal post, saying “Game over”. And speaking of voice, one of the best things that most players loved about this game was the voice acting, it became the iconic voice of the Duke Nukem franchise. It really helped the game be what it is.
And just like any other popular game, the developers decided to keep expanding on this game instead of working on a new idea, which is totally understandable as Duke Nukem 3D had already scooped up millions of players who wanted more action in the upcoming game. And so the developers promised that the players can look up for another Duke Nukem game soon.
Now, there was initially no news about the development of the game, it was just something that the developers announced at the end of the Duke Nukem 3D. But a year later in 1997, they finally made an official announcement about the new Duke Nukem game that they have been working on and that it’ll be released soon. However, the official announcement didn’t really say anything about the release date of the game but they surely said that it’ll be out in a year or so.
But was it? No! The developers would later get caught up in a vicious cycle of development that didn’t seem to go according to plan and you’ll be surprised to know that the development of the new Duke Nukem title would take, not a couple years or even 5 years but it took 15 YEARS until the game was finally ready.
I mean, the kids who used to play the game in their teenage years have their own kids who are playing Valorant on their expensive pads, which you can get a pretty cheap Valorant account for on Eldorado. 15 years! But the game was finally out after being developed by a series of developers and 3 different game engines before finally settling for Unreal engine.
The latest title of the series was called Duke Nukem Forever and for what it’s worth, it was pretty ok considering the amount of time it took for the game to be completed. But after all these years, Duke Nukem forever used the same voice actor for the iconic voice of the character, so yeah maybe the game is actually worth the wait.
As expected, the game didn’t make it big and sold half as many copies as the developers expected it would sell but it turned out to be somewhat profitable for the developers and not a complete waste of resources and more importantly TIME!