The final nail in Duke’s coffin was 2011’s Duke Nukem Forever, a game that was canceled and postponed so many times that by the time that it was released, most people didn’t really know nor care for a new Duke Nukem game. Now, we’ve got footage of a game that would have preceded 2011’s Duke Nukem Forever by at least a couple of years.
When was Duke Nukem Begins supposed to be released?
According to the animator behind the project, the canceled Duke Nukem game would have been a third-person title that explored the origins of the titular hero. It was meant to be Gearbox Entertainment’s first foray into the series before working on Duke Nukem Forever. Gearbox reportedly worked on Duke Nukem Begins from 2007 to 2009 before focusing its efforts towards Duke Nukem Forever, which was released in 2011. Work on Begins was reportedly halted and eventually canceled because of a legal dispute regarding who owned the rights to the franchise. Eventually, the rights did go to Gearbox in 2010, allowing them to work on and release Duke Nukem Forever. The animator responsible for the video upload is Gregor Punchatz, who is known for his work on the monsters from the original Doom game. Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time that Punchatz has revealed footage from Duke Nukem Begins. Back in 2019, he released parts of the same video in a sizzle reel. However, this marks the first time that Punchatz has uploaded the entire trailer online. In case you haven’t watched the video yet, it doesn’t feature actual finished gameplay footage. Instead, it’s more of a concept showing what the game would have looked like and how it would have played. Judging from what is shown, Duke Nukem Begins would have featured a Freeze Ray and Shrinker, two weapons commonly associated with Duke Nukem. We can also assume that Duke would have had the ability to rip enemy’s arms off and use them to whack other enemies around like a melee weapon. While Duke Nukem Begins was eventually canceled, it appears that Gearbox later reused parts of the project in Duke Nukem Forever.
Will we see a Duke Nukem game in the future?
It’s never fun to hear news about scrapped video games. Lest we forget, we recently reported about the canceled Superman game back in the late 2000s. With that said, there is good news for anyone hoping to see a new Duke Nukem game. Publisher, Embracer Group, now owns both Gearbox and 3D Realms. This holds a lot of promise as far as future Duke games go. However, just because the publisher effectively now owns the rights to the franchise, it doesn’t mean that it will necessarily reboot the series just yet. After all, Duke Nukem’s main appeal would probably not do well in the current gaming climate. Thus, we doubt if Embracer Group, as well as Gearbox, would be willing to take a big risk anytime soon.
