Canceled Duke Nukem games leak like races

When Gearbox Software acquired the rights to the Duke Nukem brand more than 10 years ago, it was a relatively dark time for fans. In 2011, after many years of development, the shooter saw the light of day. Duke Nukem foreverbut it didn’t even come close to meeting expectations. The participation of the famous hero of classic shooters in the project Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition from 2017 was more than anything else a bizarre curiosity without significant impact.

The game came out a year early Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour. While it gave us a brand new episode of Duke’s most famous campaign, it also reminded us of the flavor of disappointment that A little earlier, Gearbox had downloaded previous and usually better versions of the 3D shooter Duke Nukem from a digital distribution., which in some cases were also complemented by popular extensions (today they are only legally available in the lesser-known digital store Zoom Platform, which once secured a permanent license). Otherwise Gearbox hasn’t used Duke much, and the situation hasn’t changed even after the relatively recent ransom Embracer Group research.

But fans are still in for a treat thanks to a remarkable series of leaks of a number of canceled games using the Duke Nukem brand. It all started with the group x0r_jmp, when last spring they released an unfinished version of the 2001 shooter Duke Nukem Forever, which caused several versions of the game to leak in the following months. Duke Nukem: critical mass for PSP, prototype Duke Nukem: Zero Hour for Nintendo 64, 2D platformer Duke Nukem 4Ever since 1996 or hunting shooter prototype Duke Nukem: Endangered Species. The x0r_jmp group even shared with us a frame from a never-before-seen film adaptation.

To make matters worse, at the very beginning of the year, an unfinished version of the Duke Nukem 3D remake appeared called Duke Nukem: Next Gen and, finally, Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded was being developed by the Interceptor Entertainment team around the same time that Gearbox was hard at work finishing Duke Nukem Forever. And right now the desire not to distract attention from the long-awaited shooter with an attractive remake of the classics of the genre, apparently, led to the fact that the entire project was frozen. Server PC Gamer, for example, recently took notice of this matter.

The x0r_jmp group claims that Even this leak won’t end the fan base with obscure versions of canceled or forgotten games.. In any case, if you ever liked and missed Duke Nukem, you can visit the band’s website, where you will find a download link for most of the works mentioned here. But be careful some anti-virus programs may have link problems, although downloaded data should be fine of course. However, Duke Nukem: Zero Hour for Nintendo 64 can be found at Hidden Place, and Critical Mass for PSP can be downloaded as part of a downloadable bundle from Archive.org.

We generally do not share download links for leaked releases and materials, as in such cases it is often difficult to determine exactly what remains legal. The Emracer Group, which now owns the rights to the Duke Nukem brand but for some reason lets all the leaks swell and at present he does not deal with them publicly or persecute them. Therefore, some fans have already begun to develop various conspiracy theories and hope that all this is some kind of effort to mentally prepare and lure the community into a new project that will officially return the Duke Nukem brand to the radar of the gaming industry.

Could this really be the case? Who knows. After all we still don’t even know where all those leaked versions of individual games are appearingthough we wouldn’t be at all surprised if the director of Gearbox Randy Pitchford again forgot the flash somewhere. Only this time it was not compromising information and not company secrets, but long-hidden treasures for fans of the Duke Nukem series. In any case, we have a very interesting situation here, which this year could be even more interesting. We sincerely wonder what will happen next. But we are definitely glad that Duke repeatedly returns to us at least in this form.