When I googled the name of this blog, I saw a very familiar big name on the very top of the results. Guess what? DUKE NUKEM FOREVER!

3D Realms was my favorite game studio. And Duke Nukem 3D was the best shooting game in its era. Its successor, Duke Nukem Forever, was announced in early 1997. After repeatedly announcing and deferring release dates, 3D Realms said it will be released simply “when it’s done” in 2001.

After 14 years, it is still in development. Here I found a truly long list for things have been accomplish during this endless waiting…

Popular Video Game Series Releases

Duke Nukem

• Duke Nukem 64 (Nintendo 64 – October 1997)
• Duke Nukem: Time to Kill (PlayStation 1 – 1998)
• Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (Nintendo 64, – 1999)
• Duke Nukem (Game Boy Color – 1999)
• Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes (PlayStation 1 – 2000)
• Duke Nukem: Advance (Game Boy Advance – 2002)
• Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project (PC – 2002)
• Duke Nukem Mobile (Sidescroller): (Mobile Phones – 2004)
• Duke Nukem Mobile (3D): (Tapwave Zodiac – 2004, Mobile Phones – 2005)
• Duke Nukem Mobile II: Bikini Project (Mobile Phones – 2005)

Final Fantasy:

• Main Series
  • Final Fantasy VII
  • Final Fantasy VIII
  • Final Fantasy IX
  • Final Fantasy X
    • Final Fantasy X-2
  • Final Fantasy XI
  • Final Fantasy XII
• Cell Phone Games
  • Before Crisis: Final Fantasy
  • Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
  • Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode
• Tactics Series
  • Final Fantasy Tactics
  • Final Fantasy Tactice Advance
• Crystal Chronicles Series
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearer
• Remakes
  • Final Fantasy Collection
  • Final Fantasy Anthology
  • Final Fantasy Chronicles
  • Final Fantasy Origins
  • Final Fantasy I & 2: Dawn of Souls
  • Final Fantasy III DS
  • Final Fantasy IV DS
  • Final Fantasy IV Advance
  • Final Fantasy V Advance
  • Final Fantasi VI Advance
• Games Featuring Final Fantasy Characters
  • Ehrgeiz
  • Kingtom Hearts
  • Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
  • Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix
  • Kingdom Hearts II
• Movies, Anime Series & Concerts
  • Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within
  • Final Fantasy: Unlimited, Entire Series
  • Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
  • Final Fantasy: Dear Friends, Entire World Tour

Grand Theft Auto:

• Grand Theft Auto
  • Grand Theft Auto, Gameboy Color Port
• Grand Theft Auto
• Grand Theft Auto: London 1969
• Grand Theft Auto: London 1961
• Grand Theft Auto 2
• Grand Theft Auto III
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
• Grand Theft Auto Advance
• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
  • Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, PS2 Port
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

The Legend of Zelda:

• Ocarina of Time
• Majora’s Mask
• Oracle of Ages
• Oracle of Seasons
• The Wind Waker
• Four Swords Adventures
• The Minish Cap
• Six remakes of previous Zelda titles for the Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance and Gamecube.
  • Link’s Awakening DX, Gameboy Color
  • A Link to the Past, Gameboy Advance
  • Ocarina of Time, Gamecube
  • The Zelda Collector Edition, Gamecube
  • Classic NES Series: The Legend of Zelda, Gameboy Advance
  • Classic NES Series: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Gameboy Advance
• Phantom Hourglass
• Twilight Princess

The Sims:

• The Sims
• The Sims: Livin’ Large
• The Sims: House Party
• The Sims: Hot Date
• The Sims: Vacation
• The Sims: Unleashed
• The Sims: Superstar
• The Sims: Makin’ Magic
• The Sims Online
• The Sims 2
• The Sims 2: University
• The Sims 2: Nightlife
• The Sims 2: Open for Business
• The Sims (Console Port)
• The Sims Bustin’ Out
• The Sims 2 (Console Port)
• The Urbz: Sims in the City

Other Popular Game Series:

• Over 75 games based in the MegaMan universe, and 12 games featuring MegaMan universe character cameos.
• Over 50 games based in the Star Wars universe.
• Mario has appeared in over 50 different video games.
• Every Massive Multiplayer Online game and expansion with the exception of Meridian 59.
• Every Dance Dance Revolution and Bemani rhythm game
• Every Pokemon game released outside of Japan.
• Every Unreal, every Unreal Tournament, and every game that has used any of the Unreal engines.
• Quake 2, 3, 4, and countless games that have used their engines.
• Every Tony Hawk and extreme sport spin-off game.
• Daikatana began development 10 days before Duke Nukem Forever- Unfortunately no one was made John Romero’s bitch when it hit retail shelves on May 23rd, 2000.
• 3DRealms and Remedy bring Max Payne and its sequel from concepts to finished games, porting both to Xbox and PS2, and Mark Wahlberg even starred in a mediocre full length feature film based on the series.
• Valve released both Half-Life 1 and 2, with several expansion packs and countless mods for each.
• Every version of Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike Source were developed.
• Every Thief game.
• Black Isle was formed, released seven titles and was shut down.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and IV:Oblivion, and the entire Baldur’s Gate series.
• Wizards of the Coast has printed six Core Sets, 30 Expansion Sets of Magic: The Gathering. If someone bought one of every single card printed since DNF was announced, they would have a collection of over 100,000 cards.
• Every installment of Metal Gear Solid released to date, as well as Ghost Babel (MGS for the Gameboy) and the Metal Gear Acid series for PSP.
• A garage full of programmers in Croatia (Croteam) developed the engine and created the game Serious Sam. Since then there have been multiple sequels and console ports- all off a fraction of the money 3D Realms has blown on DNF’s development.
• Every 3D Prince of Persia game.
• Aside from Wolfenstein 3D, every single First Person Shooter based during World War II, including the entire Medal of Honor series.
• While DNF was been in production, Blizzard Entertainment, another studio famous for delays, has released four full games(Starcraft, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and World of Warcraft), with expansions for all of them.
• Bioware released Neverwinter Nights with two expansions, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Jade Empire. All games are deep, lengthy RPGs that demand multiple playthroughs.
• The entire Halo trilogy.
• Every Gran Turismo game.
• Team Fortress 2

Video Game Systems:

• Microsoft XBOX
• Microsoft XBOX 360
  • Several revisions including the Elite and Halo Edition
• Nintendo GameCube
• Nintendo Wii
• Nintendo Gameboy Color
• Gameboy Advance
  • Gameboy Advance SP
  • Gameboy Micro
• Nintendo DS
  • Nintendo DS Lite
  • Nintendo DSi
• Sega Dreamcast
• Sony PSone
• Sony Playstation 2
  • Sony Slim Playstation 2
• Sony Playstation 3
  • Several revisions with different hardware, pack-ins, and backwards compatibility options
• Sony PSP
  • Sony PSP Slim

• Over 4500 games were released for the above video game systems in the United States.
• Over 350,000,000 consoles and handhelds were sold worldwide.

Fun Facts

Computers & Internet:

• In 1997, the fastest consumer internet connection was a 33.6 kbps modem. On average, consumer internet connections are nearly 1000 times faster in 2009.
• When Duke Nukem Forever was announced, the fastest processor available to consumers was a 233Mhz Pentium. Since its death the clock speed of consumer processors has increased over 16 times (32 times counting dual cores), and the fabrication process has decreased from 250nm to 45nm.
• In October of 2001, Apple announced the iPod and Slashdot dismissed it as an immediate failure. Since then there have been 6 generations, as well as 2 of Minis, 3 of shuffles, and 4 of nanos. Oh, and also the iPod Touch, with which, along with the iPhone, Apple created the hottest not-just-gaming mobile platform. iTunes came from being nothing to being the biggest music retailer in the US.
• Steve Jobs was still running NeXT when Duke Nukem Forever was announced.
• Every peer to peer file sharing program including Napster was developed.
• In April of 1997, Google, eBay, and the term “weblog” didn’t exist.
• Linux gained at least 10 times the popularity it had while its kernel tripled in size.
• Mac OS switched to UNIX and became the most highly regarded general purpose operating system on the market among the computing press.
• Apple migrated its entire Macintosh line to Intel processors and every Mac sold can now run Windows.
• Microsoft released 5 consumer-oriented versions of Windows.
• Netscape Navigator 4 was released, Microsoft Internet Explorer destroyed it. Netscape 6 released on an entirely different rendering platform, Netscape dies, Mozilla foundation rises. Open-source Mozilla browsers become popular and force Microsoft to start working on new version of Internet Explorer.
• Valve releases Steam and sets a new standard in digital software distribution.
• MySpace went from beta to the largest social-networking site in the world (and the fourth most popular English language website).
• Since the announcement of Duke Nukem Forever Microsoft has released DirectX5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9.0c, 10, 10.1, and announced DirectX 11.
• The entire Geforce and Radeon lines of graphics cards are newer than Duke Nukem Forever, as well as both brand’s predecessors, the Nvidia TNTs and ATI’s RAGE.
• When Duke Nukem Forever was announced the highest resolution for contemporary CRT monitors was 1280×1024, with most gamers using 640×480, or 800×600. In 2009 there are commercial monitors as large as 2048×1152, with design specifications as high resolution as 7680×4800, 120 times more detailed than 640×480.
• The first online casino went live in 1997, since then the industry has doubled in size every year. As of 2008, worldwide online casinos are worth close to $300 billion dollars, with a largest single jackpot of just over $4 million dollars from a 5-reel 20-line online slot machine. Internet gambling has revolutionized random number generation, with some sites using everything from Earth’s atmosphere to site-wide user mouse movements as numerical seeds for slots, poker, and everything else.
• With very rare exceptions, all webcomics, in particular video gaming ones, appeared and lived on (and sometimes folded, sometimes thrived) during the development of DNF, as of May 6th, 2009. In other worlds, DNF had, until the 6th of May 2009, always been known as being in development for the whole lifetime of all webcomics.

Disasters:

• Two Boeing 767 airplanes crashed in to both World Trade Center towers, killing 2750 and spawning countless conspiracy theories.
• There have been 125 tropical cyclones. 73 hurricans in the Atlantic, 52 typhoons in the Pacific.
• There have been over 20 death-toll producing tornado outbreaks in the United States.
• Over 50 major earthquakes have shaken the world, which have shortened the Earth day by 2.68 microseconds.
• Hurricane Katrina wiped New Orleans off the map and killed 1,836 in the process.
• The fourth most powerful earthquake recorded since 1900 triggered a massive tsunami killing over 200,000 people in various countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

Economy:

• Adjusted for inflation, the average price of gas in the United States has doubled.
• The Euro was introduced as a new European currency.
• Enron has filed for bankruptcy and folded. Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling have been arrested on fraud charges and subsequently indicted and convicted. Ken Lay is now dead and Jeff Skilling is rotting away in prison.
• Apple’s market cap exceeded Dell’s.
• Nintendo became the second largest company in Japan.
• The mortgage bubble and .com bubble came and went.

Movies that were filmed, released in theatres, and have made it to DVD:

• All three Star Wars prequels.
• The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, with extended editions.
• Every Pixar movie aside from Toy Story.
• Five James Bond films, including a complete reboot of the series.
• Every movie, animation, and video game from The Matrix series.
• Every Marvel comics movie released.
• Each predictable twist ending of every movie by M. Night Shyamalan.
• In the same vein, the DVD format was finalzed and the DVD forum agreed on the HD-DVD format.
• BluRay won the HD video format war.

Pop Culture:

• Britney Spears’ entire musical career as a pop star has taken place during Duke Nukem Forever’s development.
• Theater box office totals since the announcement are over $2.62 billion.
• Colin Farrell’s entire movie career has also taken place during development.
• The concept of Bullet Time has been developed, pioneered, and completely run in to the ground.
• Cellular Phones ownership has become commonplace, whereas in 1997 they were viewed as luxurious expenditures.
• In 1997, Apple was taking preorders from Mac OS 8 and had an uncertain financial future. Since then, they completely developed and released two different versions of the iPhone which have seen such massive market penetration that the iPhone has even been joked about on The Simpsons.
• The entire cult following of Family Guy! Family Guy has debuted on FOX, been cancelled, entered syndication, been released on DVD, redebuted on FOX, and seen the release of a feature film.
• The entire Harry Potter series as well as five movies.
• Stephen King has written 16 novels.
• The first episode of South Park was first aired on August 13, 1997, the same year in which DNF was announced. The show is now in the second half of it’s tenth season, with ‘Tsst’ being the 146 episode shown.
• King of the Hill first aired on January 12 of the same year, around the same time prototype work was being done in the Quake Engine for DNF. It recently finished it’s tenth season, with 201 episodes.
• The episode count of ‘The Simpsons’ has more then doubled since DNFs announcement. Season 8, episode 23 was the 176th episode, and aired on May fourth, 1997. The 352nd episode aired on May 1st, 2005.
• Twelve seasons of Survivor. The Thirtenth comes this fall.
• The ending of Star Trek shows Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and the beginning and ending of Enterprise, plus the films First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis.
• Joss Whedon showed us that he truly is our master with every Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly episode. (Oh, and the movie Serenity.)

Science & Technology:

• The Voyager 1 spacecraft has travelled 8.8 billion miles from Earth.
• The two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity were proposed, authorized, announced, designed, launched and successfully landed upon Mars where they have been exploring the surface for over 2.5 years.
• NASA’s Deep Impact program also went full circle.
• The International Space Station was assembled and has been orbiting Earth for over 8 years.
• NASA has launched 30 manned space shuttle missions, Russia has launched 17.
• The Airbus A380 “Super Jumbo” plane was designed, built, tested, and delivered to airlines.
• Tier One developed, built, tested, and launched SpaceShipOne- winning the Ansari X-Prize for being the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.
• In 1997 there were only 50 million US cell phone subscribers in the United States. Today there are more than 200 million, which amounts to over 60% of the population of the USA.
• The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan (the largest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the world) was in contract, built, launched, comissioned, and began active duty.
• Costa Concordia, the biggest Italian cruise liner was designed, built and delivered by the Fincantieri shipyards, in Italy.
• The Space Shuttle Columbia burnt up during re-entry, the entire Space Shuttle program went through a safety overhaul, and the Shuttle returned to flight.

Sports

• The single season home run record has been broken, twice.
• Barry Bonds set a new all-time home run record.
• The Red Sox broke their curse by finally winning the world series.
• Two of the greatest NBA Dynasties in history have reigned and ended: The incredible 1990s Chicago Bulls dynasty were still unmatched in ’97 and disbanded after the ’98 finals. The Los Angeles Lakers acquired Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal in ’97 and Phil Jackson in ’99, effectively becoming the greatest team in the NBA at the time with another landmark dynasty that lasted from 2000-2002. The Lakers disbanded after losing the finals to the Pistons in 2004.
• There have been five Olympic Games (three winter, two summer).
• Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France 7 consecutive years.
• The World Wrestling Federation has changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment and bought its two main competitors, WCW and ECW, relaunching ECW, and facing new competition from TNA.
• The Cubs have lost 798 games since April ’97.
• St. Louis Cardinals moved from Busch Stadium to new Busch stadium.
• Philidelphia Phillies moved from Veterans Stadium to Citizens Bank Ballpark.
• The Houston Astros moved from the Astrodome to Enron Field (Now Minute-Maid Park).
• The Cincinnati Reds moved from Cinergy Field to Great American Ballpark.
• The Milwaukee Brewers moved from County Stadium to Miller Park.
• The San Diego Padres moved from Qualcomm stadium to Petco Park.
• The Pittsburgh Pirates moved from Three-River Stadium to PNC Park.
• The Detroit Tigers moved from Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park.
• The Seattle Mariners moved from The Kingdome to Safeco Field.
• The Montreal Expos are now the Washington Nationals.
• The Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays were formed.
• The Cleveland Browns turned into the Baltimore Ravens.
• A new Cleveland Browns team was formed and moved into a new stadium.
• The Cincinnati Bengals moved from Cinergy Field to Paul Brown Stadium.
• The New England Patriots moved from Foxboro Stadium to Gillete Stadium.
• The Tennessee Titans moved into The Coliseum after 3 years at a college football stadium.
• The Pittsburgh Steelers moved from Three-Rivers Stadium to Heinz Field.
• The Denver Broncos moved from Mile High Stadium to Invesco Field.
• The Washington Redskins moved from RFK Stadium to FedEx Field.
• The Phildelphia Eagles moved from Veterans Stadium to Lincoln Financial Field.
• The Tampa Bay Buccaneers moved from Houlihan Stadium to Raymond James Stadium.
• The Detroit Lions moved from the Silverdome to Ford Field.
• The Seattle Seahawks moved from the Kingdome to Qwest Field.
• Brette Farve set a new all-time passing touchdown record while the careers of Ryan Leaf and Cade McNown began, sucked, and ended.

United States Politics:

• The Identity of Deep Throat has been revealed.
• 40 new members have been elected to the Senate.
• The national debt has increased by over 3 trillion dollars.
• Bill Clinton finished his presidential term, George W. Bush was elected, re-elected, and finished his term.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger campaigned, was elected, and served a full term as California governor.

World Events:

• 4 nations have acquired nuclear weapons technology.
• 19 wars have begun.
• 5 wars have ended.
• Approximately 509,373,306 people have died and 661,373,082 have been born.
• There have been 7 total solar eclipses and 8 total lunar eclipses.
• The United Kingdom handed sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China.
• There have been 22 “major” school shootings worldwide.
• The population of the world has crossed six billion
• After a nearly 98% vote, Sudan split in to two countries.

The great news is: we would finally about to be able to get our hands on this game in just another 2 months. Its current developer, Gearbox Software, said it will be released this June. (official website)