When Duke Nukem 3D came out, I was still living at home.
When Duke Nukem 3D came out, voice files in computer games were relatively new.
When Duke Nukem 3D came out, giving personalities to the protagonist in a first-person shooter was novel.
When Duke Nukem 3D came out, it was par for the course to have 3ish drawings of a bad guy. (Facing front, facing the back, from the side (mirror imaged for the other side).)
When Duke Nukem 3D came out, we had never heard the name “Monica Lewinsky”.
When Duke Nukem 3D was released, “Wannabe” had not yet hit the airwaves.
When Duke Nukem 3D was released, I had not yet met Maribou… in real life, anyway. We *MAY* have read each other’s work… but we weren’t even flirting.
All that to say: Duke Nukem 3D came out in a different world under different circumstances when, let’s face it, we were all much younger.
If you remember when Duke Nukem Forever was announced, if you remember when Duke Nukem Forever changed engines, if you remember when Duke Nukem Forever was totally going to be released soon but they changed standards for computer game box sizes since the game was originally announced and so they had to reprint the manuals, and if you remember when Chinese Democracy came out and you remember buying that because you had spent time hoping it’d be good even as you knew that these were all of the classic signs of “it’s gonna be a hot mess”, well… Duke Nukem Forever will give you closure.
And it’s probably better to have closure than to spend the rest of your life idly wondering “what if?”
That’s another way of saying this: You’ve waited this long for Duke Nukem Forever. You can probably wait another four or five months and pick it up used for less than half of what you’re being charged for it now… there will be a lot of folks trading it in.
(Sigh. I spent more time believing that this game would be released someday than believing in Santa Claus.)
I am so sorry. I never played Duke 3D so I’m oblivious to the zeitgeist beyond Slashdot posts about it being vaporware.
This article might be of interest because it goes into depth about DNF’s development hell. It gave me pause and hinted that if it was ever released it’d be an enormous letdown.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1
In the defense of Gearbox/2K they did say that they released DNF as 3D Realms had intended it to be released in order to distance themselves from being associated with the game.
Well, I’m heading for closure on a great many things anyway. Decided to just get this one over with. Since it’s a Steam game, I prolly could have waited and just got the non-physical copy later.
Meh.
Duke got Nuked by developement hell and will not live there Forever.
Duke got Daikatanaed?
When Duke Nukem 3D came out…
…we were still trading the first levels of games on floppy disks.
…it was typical for an entire game to be distributed on floppy disks.
…many people honestly believed that the future of computer gaming was picking between video clips “choose your own adventure”-style.
…the idea of a video game with a multimillion-dollar budget was ludicrous fantasy.
…”copy protection” consisted of looking up codes in the hardcopy game manual.
…multiplayer was a frivolous distraction that was thrown in as an afterthought (heck, I think that the original Duke3D let you give out copies of the “multiplayer version” for free!)
…consoles would always trade away flexibility and raw capability in favor of stability and performance (and, of course, you’d never need to worry about ‘patching’ a console game!)
Oddly, they seem to be trying to make up for it.
The update will allow Duke to carry 4 weapons. The first DLC will have new multiplayer modes and maps.
Unfortunately, I think it’s too little, too late. When I get on to play some MP, there are so few people now that it’s almost impossible to get a match on. (Kinda reminds me of the last days of WC:Arena.) I guess My Digs will remain less than full. It’s too bad because the third DLC was going to go with 15 SP maps. Given that these would have been maps developed in this year, they probably would have been better.