Duke Nukem Forever: cancelled 1996 side-scroller

Duke Nukem Forever—those words brought nothing but pain to everyone in the nineties waiting for the story of a tough guy in pixel art form. A project born as a side-scroller for DOS that never truly came to be—or rather, exists only as a ghost in the archives of fans and developers.

It was a classic plan: Duke Nukem would run across the screen, blast away, and act like the toughest guy in gaming. The timing was perfect—in the mid-nineties, scrolling action games were hot, pixel graphics ruled, and the concept was delightfully simple: a character with attitude and some seriously badass weapons. But Forever became a symbol of decline, not triumph.

Why it took forever? You can guess. The development team dissolved over time, priorities shifted, technology moved faster than work progressed. What should have been straightforward—running, jumping, shooting—turned into a project nobody cared about anymore. Three Duke Nukem games on consoles had already shipped long ago, and this old DOS idea was forgotten by everyone.

Today you can only experience this as a fan attempt or undocumented code in some archive of unfinished history. It's not even a game you'd actually play—it's more like a beacon of poor decisions and dissolved vision. Interesting mainly as an artifact of failure rather than entertainment.

It's worth checking out only for the nostalgia of what could have been. Duke Nukem Forever should have always been called Duke Nukem Never, and that was the only name that fit.