

But Gearbox Software ended up buying the Duke IP and finished the game in 2011, Nearly fifteen years after it's original annoucement. Effectively killing the project for several months. Just with a few more problems thrown into the fray.ģD Realms eventually ran out of money. The perfectionism pretty much wrecked everything, and development was nearly shifted over to Digital Extremes in 2004, as a desperate attempt to get it finished in some form.īut the release of that trailer seemed to suggest that it was finally going to get off the ground. 3D Realms was still insistent it was being worked on despite the lack of info at the time. The gap between the two trailers is what catapulted the game into infamy. You may also notice that pecuilar "when it's done" release date, leading into. Which the DNF staff would then have to implement in their game. Leading to numerous occasions where a new title would come out with something innovative. George Broussard was insistent that the game needed to be absolutely perfect and ahead of it's time. But internally things were falling apart, as the story goes. With impressive features such as interactive surfaces. Granted, the end result looked utterly wild. It took three years for the next trailer to drop. This would be publicly confirmed the very next month, with the dev team being optimistic that they could transfer the work shown at E3 "within a month to 6 weeks.". Due to it being better suited for wide-open areas like they were planning to include. Shortly after E3 1998, 3D Realms internally discussed throwing out the Quake II engine in exchange for the Unreal Engine. So everything seemed alright to the average consumer. They did manage to drop a trailer for this build by E3 1998.

They were actually mockups created using the Quake I engine. So when screenshots ( direct link) were provided to PC Gamer a couple months later. 3D Realms didn't actually have the Quake II engine at the time of annoucement. However, in what would mark the beginning of the game's numerous development issues. The annoucement revealed plans to license out the Quake II engine, and provided a rather optimistic release date of "Spring, 1998". After 3D Realms canned the platformer, they quickly revealed the name would be reused on a proper sequel to Duke Nukem 3D. This is where the infamous legend was born. With PC getting it's own 2D platformer entitled "Manhattan Project" in 2002. While the concept of making a new 2D Duke game would eventually first happen in 1999 on the Game Boy Color, of all places. It was supposed to be a 2D platformer in the vein of the first 2 Duke games, but with the humour and visual style of 3D.Īfter it's cancelation, the engine was sold to Inner Circle Creations. While not officially considered part of the development timeline, this is the origin of the name.
