A funeral for Duke ... ?

Notice what I did with the question mark there?

But for the moment, yes, it's true. Duke Nukem is dead. 3DRealms, the company which develops Duke games, most notably the oft delayed Duke Nukem Forever, has gone bankrupt and closed its doors. And the game which may never be, starting from development in 1997, has potentially sunk with it.

Purely in the context of my video game fandom, this is a great tragedy for me. I don't get into games very much anymore and, in fact, the last game I have actually completed front to back was Duke Nukem 3d for PC with the new graphics pack. I was psyched ever since news last year started to come out that DNF was in active development and could be released sometime this year. There were even teaser trailers, screenshots, exclusive interviews, the works. Word on the street though is that part of 3DRealms' problem is that they wanted the game to hit the street with an explosive bang, surprising people instead of giving away too much of the premise of the game. And I must say, even though this may have hurt them from lack of publicity, it would have been a refreshing thing to have accomplished. I wasn't a fan of GTAIV's constant advertising, which didn't do much to hype the game for me and got rather annoying by the end. Of course, it didn't help that the game didn't live up to its potential.

But back to the question mark. 3DRealms going down will not kill DNF. Mark my words. This is just more publicity for the fire. Duke Nukem is back in the news and people are talking about it. Maybe not in a good way, but many people are going to express disappointment that the game will never be. And someone will jump on that opportunity and finish it, something 3DRealms couldn't do for over a decade.

Here are the latest and maybe last "promos" for the game.