Welcome Back Duke?

While it is perhaps one of the most troubled game projects in the history of computer gaming, the eventual release of Duke Nukem Forever this year marks the end of what has been a running joke in the games press going all the way back to the last century.

While Duke Nukem Forever was not on the first two Vaporware of the Year Awards Lists at Wired Magazine, once it entered the list at number 2 in the year 2000 it remained tenaciously a part of it all the way up to its release.

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"2: Duke Nukem Forever: 3Drealms started work on Duke Nukem Forever in early 1997 with a delivery date slated for January 1998. Needless to say, it's still not out. Officially, the release date of this game is 'when it's done,' according to the company's website."

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The term "Vaporware" was originally coined by a Microsoft engineer in 1982 and has come to mean any piece of computer hardware or software that is announced to the general public, but is never actually released or officially canceled.

DNF took the Number One slot in 2001 and 2002, receiving Wired Magazine's Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, and was removed from participation in the list in 2004 because Wired no longer thought it was funny.

"Duke Nukem Forever is the very epitome of vaporware. It probably will never, ever ship, so Wired News has removed it from the running, despite many votes from readers."

That should have been the end of it -- but no, the gamers were not finished -- and the flood of votes once again pushed the game onto the list as Number One in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, but was dropped from the list completely in 2009 due to the implosion of developing studio 3Drealms.

Duke Nukem Forever made the list again though as Number 12 for 2010 -- in spite of the fact that the game was demo'd at PAX 2010 and, a few months later, at PAX East 2011. Under development at Gearbox the game was to be published by 2K in 2011.

On June 10th, 2011 the release of Duke Nukem Forever put to rest the longest running Vaporware award winning project in the history of gaming -- but the launch of this highly anticipated, long awaited game did not end the controversy or fan irritation, because the game appeared to have failed to live up to all of the hype and PR that had gone into it over the years. The fans -- and the Duke has a legion of them -- were not pleased.