I was reading this article regarding the official death of Duke Nukem Forever, and I had an epiphany*: I think DNF should be developed as an homage to Duke Nukem 3D, similar to the way Mega Man 9 was a tribute to Mega Man 1, 2 and 3. For those that don’t know, MM9 said “The hell with trying to make the graphics, bosses, weapons and such more spectacular with every outing. Let’s just make a new version of an awesome older game.” It has 8-bit graphics and sound and eschews most of the capabilities that Mega Man was given in later installments of the series. It’s also brutally difficult in the way that the first three games were.
Duke Nukem Forever needs to use the Duke Nukem 3D engine and just embrace the old-school aspect of it. I think a stripped-down, accessible FPS would do very well as downloadable content from Steam and the Wii, XBox and PS3 stores. The thing that seems to have finally killed DNF is that the creators seemed to think it had to be epic… I think the vast majority of gamers would be happy with simply “fun.”
It’s entirely possible, even likely, that somebody in some corner of the Internet (or even the SDMB) has already suggested this, but I’ve never read it. I came up with my epiphany independently of theirs, so I’m still calling it mine.
If they would be willing to sell it for 4.99 on Steam I’d be willing to buy it. I don’t see myself paying any more than that though for a game that dated. 4.99 for a couple hours of nostalgia seems fair.
I dunno. While I’ve seen people enjoy 2D games with old school graphics, I have not seen this in 3D. What I see more often is theold game being upgraded.
I remember when Dark Forces (from LucasArts) was a very popular game to mod. Some of the mods for that game were crazy intricate and definitely pushed the boundaries of what a 2.5d engine could do. DNF could be much the same. Release it, source code and all and let the modding community do with it as they will. It’ll come out a lot better than if it came out of a studio.
Obligatory link to the Duke Nukem Forever List which details the many many many accomplishments made in the world while this game was in development hell: http://duke.a-13.net/
I like this idea, too. Wasn’t the original *Duke Nukem *part of the first crop of popular FPSs along with *Doom *and (especially) Wolfenstein? I loved Doom, and if you’re gonna go “stripped-down,” like I mentioned in my OP, that generation doesn’t get much more basic. You couldn’t even look up and down in the earliest FPSs. So much fun though!
