There are few game projects that have been shelved as long as Duke Nukem Forever. Originally announced in 1997 and first shown in a trailer in 2001, delays, cancellations and changes kept piling up, frustrating many users who were eagerly awaiting the successor to Duke Nukem 3D, a title that was groundbreaking at the time by combining the gameplay style of other shooters , which also saw the light of day that season, with a more humorous and provocative tone.

A trailer from 2001 marked the before and after of the wait for Duke Nukem Forever, four years after the game was announced. The wait seemed to be worth it. However, the game that did not reach users until 10 years later, in June 2011, looked little or nothing like what the trailer released 10 years earlier had promised. After 14 years of waiting, there was a wave of frustration that still accompanies the game. And from the reflection, the concept of Duke Nukem Forever 2001 was born, i.e. the unpublished version of the game shown that year.

In 2018, we discovered that, to even more frustration, Duke Nukem Forever 2001 was already 90% complete, but that the decision to change the graphics engine (from Unreal Engine to Unreal Engine 2) meant that all that work ended up in the bucket. garbage. And the report ended with a reflection from my colleague Isidro, which is now more relevant than ever: «It wouldn’t be bad if 3D Realms and Gearbox agreed (already started negotiations) to finish the title and list it as vintage tribute. That would almost certainly be a success.»

It would have been a great success indeed, but despite the aforementioned talks, the project never materialized… in official studios. Fortunately, however, the community got to work and started working on the Duke Nukem Forever Restoration Project, a project to make Duke Nukem Forever 2001 a reality, drawing inspiration from the trailer that marked the before and after.

The good news is that after a long time of work they are responsible They have already released the first volume of Duke Nukem Forever 2001, which is completely free and can be downloaded here. Of course, I should point out that at least at the time of writing the download server is failing more than a fair shotgun, I’ve been trying to download its 1.6 gigabytes for about two hours and so far I’m up to 559 megabytes, which is getting a little frustrating. I don’t know if this is an apocryphal tribute to the original wait, but if so, I hope there are no plans to replicate the subsequent disappointment as well.

This first volume, titled First Slice, represents the first chapter, which has 9 levels (and a secret level). In addition, it has 12 unique weapons, a map editor, as well as a multiplayer/deathmatch mode, and from what we can see in the presentation video, we have reason to be excited again, as at first glance it seems to retain the essence of the 2001 trailer , so from Duke Nukem 3D. However, I will update this news when I finally manage to download it to share my first impressions. Even though it takes a few hours to download, it’s nothing compared to 14 years the first time.