Duke Nukem Forever’s 2001 build appears online, may fully leak in June

Duke Nukem Forever’s 2001 build appears online, may fully leak in June

Beleaguered game's most famous reveal was based on fully playable code.

Sam Machkovech – May 9, 2022 3:41 PM | 84

Apparent footage from a 2001 build of Duke Nukem Forever has leaked, 21 years later. As this version of the Mona Lisa might say, deal with it. Credit: 3D Realms

The story of Duke Nukem Forever's development appeared to be tied up in a bow when the game finally launched in 2011, a whopping 14 years after it had been announced. But the first-person shooter that was eventually cobbled together by Gearbox Software, crappy as it was, didn't necessarily show the game's whole story.

Arguably the game's most famous trailer came at E3 2001; it showed off a bombastic, explosion-filled romp through Las Vegas that actually looked like a playable video game, apparently rendered in that era's version of Unreal Engine. This week, we've learned just how playable that version of the game was—with at least one of Duke Nukem Forever's original creators backing up its authenticity.

“A smattering of test levels”

The game's latest leak, posted to 4chan on Sunday and widely shared by Duke Nukem fansite duke4.net, appears to be made of original 2001 code and assets. It includes a one-minute video of first-person carnage in a very Duke-appropriate environment of a strip club called "Slick Willy." The sequence was apparently played and captured by the build's leaker.

In addition, the leaker suggested that the build's playable files, source code, and official map editor could be released in June—which would coincide with the E3 trailer's 21st anniversary—and responded to various 4chan doubters by posting additional images based on their requests. These included screengrabs of the build's file and folder lists, along with images from other sections of the game and a higher-res peek at "the redneck from the E3 trailer."

Doubters requested this image from the newly discovered *Duke Nukem Forever* build, and the leaker obliged.

Ars Video

Though this week's video only includes three demonstrated guns (pistol, shotgun, semi-automatic rifle), the leaker suggested that nearly all options in the video's weapons-list interface are functional, with the exception of "the chainsaw and the freezer." It's unclear if the game files have been manually patched to work on modern PCs or whether interested players will need to pull out era-appropriate PCs with proper drivers, OSes, and hardware. (Optimistic retro gamers may want to pillage their closets for spare GeForce 6600 XT GPUs, just in case.)

Could the community finish what 3D Realms started?

The leak follows video footage that leaked in 2019 showing more of the 2001 build's Las Vegas environments, some of which didn't find their way into the game's eventual Gearbox-shepherded retail version. It's unclear whether this week's content comes from the same build, and this week's leak shows that it isn't necessarily the final build used to generate the E3 footage that has made the rounds for two decades at this point.

There's also the matter of a build that Ars Technica tested in 2006, distributed by 3D Realms via DVDs mailed to the press. This build included both a formal, official demo and a number of in-development maps and assets that could be loaded and played via console commands. The author of the above Ars article, Ben Kuchera, was unable to confirm whether this week's leak resembles what he played 16 years ago, and the original report did not include any video or screen capture of what that build looked like.

Console-related commands aren't needed to access additional levels in this 2001 build of the game. Credit: 3D Realms

Broussard made clear that he isn't invested in closely checking the latest leak's authenticity and pointed to an uneasy relationship with the game this many years later. "I’m not really interested in talking about it or retreading a painful past," he said. But while the build may have paled in comparison to other megaton shooters being promoted in 2001, including that year's Halo, this week's newly revealed sequence shows some of its content aging decently, particularly its implementation of sprite- and particle-based explosions and real-time lighting effects.

With the released game now past the 11-year mark, it's arguable that any leaked files fall under the category of historical curiosity about the making of gaming's best-known vaporware—though if a leak includes classic games still actively re-released by their platform holders, the ethics may be iffier. Either way, count us among the curious to see exactly where this 2001 build lands in terms of both playability and completed action sequences—and how the community might respond to any source-code leak. Could an enterprising fan finish what 3D Realms started (or, at least, do so differently than Gearbox Software did)?