I just stumbled upon a thing called The List – a list of events that have occurred since Duke Nukem Forever has been in development, as well as some fun trivia about this timespan. The original press release about DNF was apparently April 25th, 1997, which means that over nine years have passed since then. Wow. In 1997 I was doing my military service, and it still feels hard to imagine that that much time has passed since then.

Here are some nice facts from The List:

Since the press release, the following games have been released:

• Final Fantasy VII - XII (and I’m sure there’s time for XIII as well).
• Quake 2, 3 and 4.
• All Grand Theft Auto games.
• All The Sims games.
• Every Tony Hawk and extreme sport spin-off game.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and IV: Oblivion, and the entire Baldur’s Gate series.
• Every Metal Gear Solid game.
• Starcraft, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and World of Warcraft – notably by not-exactly-greased-lightning-swift Blizzard.
• 3D Realms(!) released Max Payne and Max Payne 2, and other games. Highly ironical.

The following video game systems have been released:

• Microsoft XBOX
• Microsoft XBOX 360
• Nintendo GameCube
• Nintendo Gameboy Color
• Gameboy Advance
• Nintendo DS
• Sega Dreamcast
• Sony PSone
• Sony Playstation 2
• Sony PSP
• (And I’ll be damned if Wii and PS3 won’t make the list as well.)

Some trivia:

• In April of 1997, Google, eBay and blogging didn’t exist.
• Microsoft released 5 consumer-oriented versions of Windows and might release Vista before Duke Nukem Forever hits shelves.
• The Euro was introduced as a new European currency.
• All three Star Wars prequels and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy with extended editions have been released in theatres and DVD.
• The Beatles formed, released every single one of their albums and broke up in less time than DNF’s development time. During this time they also toured the world several times.
• The United States’ entire program to put a man on the moon, from Kennedy’s challenge to the landing, took less time than DNF.

And muuuuuch more! Check out The List to see heaps of info like this.

I read some speculation that Duke Nukem Forever is 3D Realms’ idea of a practical joke; the “Forever” part was supposed to be an indication that this won’t and never was intended to be finished. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me, but I have to admit that it’s an excellent prank in that case – and next year would be a great time to reveal it, to make it a splendid ten-year hoax!

Part of me still wants to believe that DNF will be released, and will be a glorious return to Duke 3D’s macho sexism. Oh, the fond memories I have of playing multiplayer Duke 3D in my pal’s basement… The shrinking ray rocked. And how could hormone-filled teenagers not be impressed by a game that included strippers, a porn cinema, pig cops and the marvellously vulgar and obscene cut scene including a newspaper, a chopped-off head and excrement? I really really really would like to see a humorous and very well-made game like that using modern technology. I won’t admit that I’m still a teenager at heart, though.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 8th, 2006 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.