If you’ve been following gaming over the past couple of decades, you’re probably aware of Duke Nukem Forever. Yes, Duke’s follow-up to the seminal Duke Nukem 3D went through several years of development, two developers, and several fans’ tolerance levels before finally being released to middling reviews in 2011.
So, why are we talking about it? Well, during this whole nightmare, Gearbox had in the works a prequel for Duke Nukem 3D entitled Duke Nukem Begins. The game was eventually shuttered due to legal issues, but not before a trailer had been produced teasing the prequel.
Directed by Gregor Punchatz, who also worked as a modeler on the original Doom games and Rise of the Triad, had previously leaked bits and pieces of the trailer back in 2019, but has now uploaded the whole thing to his YouTube channel.
“In 2008, when I was working for the good folks at Janimation in Dallas Tx, we were hired by Gearbox to create a vertical slice (an animated version of what the game will look like) for the game ‘Duke Nukem Begins’, a Duke origin story,” says Punchatz. “The whole team that worked with me deserves to see this released into the wild. I hope this somehow resurrects this version of the game by showing the world how awesome it would have been…”
Given the response to DNF and Duke’s hiatus (aside from a few cameo appearances), the question of whether we’ll see everyone’s favourite alien-stomping one-liner machine again is still out there. Neil remarked in his retrospective of Duke 3D how the era of action films that Duke parodied has slipped away, leaving Duke now feeling out of place. Maybe one day we’ll get that answer.
Props to PCGamer for the heads up.