Duke Nukem Forever: images and videos of a 2D version appear on the net

Duke Nukem Forever a title that gamers with more than a few springs behind them remember in particular for its very long and troubled development phase. In the fifteen years that have passed between the release of Duke Nukem 3D in 1996 and Duke Nukem Forever in 2011, the development of the video game has experienced numerous restarts and changes of direction, so as to stop hoping for its official release on the market.

And, apparently, one of the first stages in the development of Duke Nukem Forever still envisioned the game as a 2D platformerexactly like the first two versions of the franchise but with much more elaborate pixel art graphics, taken from the rendering of the Duke Nukem 3D version but as a two-dimensional sprite.

In reality, the existence of a 2D version of Duke Nukem Forever had already been known, when in August the developer Darrin Hurd had given an interview to Apogee in which he had told some background on the birth and development of the video game. And, above all, on its title which is the result of a pun permeated in some way by the macho irreverence, perhaps a little anachronistic today, which has distinguished the character from the very beginning.

Hurd had in fact told that the main protagonist of the first game developed for Apogee was a Russian soldier named Evawith full breasts. “When we were looking for a name we thought it would be funny if Duke fell in love with Eva and her shapes, and since this was the fourth chapter of Duke, the name of Duke Nukem 4 Eva“. Which, over time, turned into “forever”.

The 2D version was abandoned because at that time video games were just in the transition phase towards 3D graphics, in a particular era in which 3D titles were seen as a projection of the future and two-dimensional titles as glories of the past.