This video game has the dubious honour of winning the Wired Vapourware Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and has now shut down, but maybe all hope is not lost
This video game has the dubious honour of winning the Wired Vapourware Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and has now shut down, but maybe all hope is not lost
Of all the terms that one hears in IT, the most ominous one, which is designed to send shivers down your spine and make you feel as if somebody is playing Rachmaninoff up and down your spinal column if one is permitted to borrow from the inimitable McLean are the words 'Real Soon Now'. For, RSN, as this is usually called, could mean anything from the next five minutes to eternity, or even beyond.
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Games seem to fall prey to this, and one of the games that have been in production almost for ever is Duke Nukem Forever. According to Wikipedia, DNF was officially first announced in April 1997, and though data about the release was announced in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2007, and, most recently, in December 2008, there was no product at all.
And today, forget the game word has it that 3D Realms, which was developing Duke Nukem Forever, is shutting down. And this means that this game may never see the light of day at all, unless, of course, somebody decided to revive this game in one form or the other.
One wonders if this is possible, because this game seems almost cursed. In fact, Wired featured it in its Vapourware Awards in 2000, 2001 and 2002. They even created the Vapourware Lifetime Achievement Award just for DNF, and thought that this was one way to take it off the list. But the public loved DNF, and Wired editors had to keep including it in 2005, 2006 and 2007, and yes, even in 2008. Now that this game is dead, Wired editors can sigh in relief and then finally say good riddance.
Other examples
While DNF has been blamed for getting delayed time and again, one can draw hope from the fact that many things in IT, which like this one were given up for dead, have made a comeback. One nice recent example is Arc, a dialect of the Lisp programming language. This was announced in 2001 and only released in 2008.
Another classic comeback vapourware product is Bluetooth the specifications were originally developed in 1994, but the release of Bluetooth 1.0 was possible only in 1999. According to bluetooth.com, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) was formed with five companies in 1998, and in 2008, the Bluetooth SIG welcomed its 10,000th member and over 2 billion products have been shipped in ten years.
What next?
Fans of DNF can take some solace from the fact that at least one other game has been in development for almost as long as DNF. Yes, we are talking about Return To Dark Castle, which, though promised in 1996, was only released in 2008.
Who knows, one day, even DNF may see the light of day. But don't hold your breath.
We need another award
It is nice to win a Booker, which honours individual books, but a Nobel in Literature is always better because it recognises an author's output over a period of decades.
Similarly, while a Wired Vapourware Lifetime Achievement Award may be good for some, you need to give a nastier award for products that take longer.
And since nobody has come up with one, I propose one called the Circle of Jove, which will be given to products that take in excess of a dozen years, which is the time that Jupiter takes to go around the sun. Two candidates are Duke Nukem Forever (1997 - 2009) and Return To Dark Castle (1996 - 2008). If you know of anything else, let me know!
QUICK TAKE
>>Duke Nukem Forever may never come out
>>This is because its developer 3D Realms is shutting down
>>Will somebody else take over this product?
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