Duke Nukem Forever is famous for its long and grueling development cycle among PC gamers of a certain age. There is 15 years between the release of Duke Nukem 3D in 1996 and the final release of Forever in 2011, during which time the game has gone through many permutations and development teams.
Earlier this year, a 4chan leaker called x0r_jmp leaked a 3D build of the game from around 2001. This week, the same source shared an even older piece of the puzzle: a playable version of the 1996 2D version of Duke Nukem Forever (DNF). The screenshots and gameplay video are very similar to the first two 2D Duke Nukem games, but consist of a game with an updated visual style in the form of trendy 3D rendering of pixel art.
It’s the first time a playable version of this game is available, but it’s not the first time we’ve seen a 2D version of DNF. In August, Scott Miller, founder of original Duke Nukem developer Apogee Software, published an interview with developer Darrin Hurd talking about the origins of the 2D version of Duke Nukem Forever.
Hurd says the look of the game is due to Duke Nukem 3D rendering as 2D sprites, which explains why the game looks more like 1994’s Donkey Kong Country than the pixel art of the original Duke Nukem games.
“It was actually a bit of a pun,” Hurd says. “The main protagonist in the first game was a female Russian soldier named Eva. So while we were trying to come up with a name as a group, we thought it would be funny for Duke to fall in love with Eva and her “huge beings.” Thus the name ‘Duke Nukem 4 Eva’ was born. In it, 4Eva eventually evolved into Forever.”
Hurd said the 2D version of Duke Nukem Forever was canceled due to the growing popularity of 3D games, including Duke Nukem 3D. It may be hard to believe given the success of 2D games like Shovel Knight, Super Meat Boy, Cuphead, and Hollow Knight, but PC Games like Quake and 3D-capable home consoles like the first PlayStation and Nintendo 64 in the mid- to late-90s made a clear distinction: 3D was the wave of the future, and 2D games were remnants of the past.
None of the leaked versions of DNF have much to do with the version that Gearbox Software released in 2011, which came under brutal criticism. Taken together, however, the 3 versions of the game make one thing clear: Duke Nukem Forever clearly has more entertainment value as a story than as a video game.
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