Duke Nukem Forever finally gets a release date — 14 years and 2 companies later

The rumors of the king’s demise were greatly exaggerated. First-person shooter Duke Nukem Forever, one of the most iconic vaporware titles of all time, finally has a release date and is coming out for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC in early May.

Gearbox has released an official trailer for the game as well to mark the game’s release date — and it looks like it fits the Duke Nukem agenda to the letter, filled with nudity, violence and crude one-liners. The character from the original 1996 game, Duke Nukem 3D, was a studly, cigar-chomping, and highly weaponized badass and struck a chord with young rebellious males playing games for the first time. The game was extremely violent and it was controversial for its depiction of women as sex objects. It became a bit of a cult phenomenon.

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But Duke Nukem Forever, the most recent title in the series, was trapped in developmental hell for more than ten years under Scott Miller and 3D Realms. While originally responsible for Duke Nukem 3D and the rest of the series, the game studio just couldn’t come to a consensus as to what to do with Duke Nukem Forever. The game was plagued with delays after changes in the game engine and other delays. The game was finally stripped of a release date and the last gamers heard from the testosterone-bleeding Duke was a teaser trailer in 2007.

3D Realms eventually closed its doors after failing to complete the game after more than 13 years of development. And why not — after working on the same game for more than ten years with very little to show for it, the whole company was essentially an inside joke for the gaming community. The company finally shut its doors in 2009, and the consensus was that Duke Nukem Forever would forever be a vaporware title.

Well, Take-Two Interactive Software — the publishers behind Borderlands and the Grand Theft Auto series —  would have none of that. Take Two picked up the rights for Duke Nukem Forever from 3D Realms and handed the keys over to Gearbox Software, the company responsible for first-person shooter Borderlands. Expectations for the game are already pretty high, as Gearbox’s Borderlands was pretty successful and garnered a score of 84 out of 100 across 83 reviews on review-aggregating site Metacritic. The turnaround time was pretty quick for Gearbox, which released a playable demo at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle in September.

Gamers that still have enough hope the game will see the light of day can see the official trailer at Gearbox’s Duke Nukem Forever website.