You Can Now (Try To) Play The Leaked 2001 Duke Nukem Forever Build

You know how yesterday we wrote about that 2001 build of the infamous Duke Nukem Forever, and how it was supposed to be released to the public in June? Yeah, by “June,” they meant “the day after,” because it’s now available to download and try out.

Everything present in the 4chan leak has now been uploaded to The Internet Archive, from the screenshots to the videos to the build of the game itself (which also includes an editor). This means you can now play through sections of the game, though it should be noted that as a leak of an in-development build, of a game that would not be released for another 10 years, it’s pretty rough. As the game’s former director George Broussard said yesterday:

Most of what’s there are small level snippets, level designer tests, or some fake build out areas for an E3 demo. There’s some guns, yes, but next to no gameplay code or much AI/enemies or anything. It’s just some art/levels for the most part.

A sentiment echoed by Apogee founder Scott Miller:

Looks like someone leaked a build of Duke Nukem Forever from 2001. Anyone expecting much of a playable game will be disappointed. The game’s brilliant trailer from that period definitely over-represented what was actually playable in the game.

And backed up by some folks who have already downloaded and tried it out, like this Reddit user:

Now having had some time to mess with it, it’s riddled with bugs, most maps are utterly devoid of anything resembling gameplay, the renderer is glitchy as hell (though to be fair, this is to be expected given the age of it, might be improved via something like dgvoodoo) and the sound only partially works, but the glimpses into what could have been are enticing as hell. I’ll have to dig into this more later.

If you’re interested in trying it out yourself, those who have already installed it are reporting—unsurprisingly given this is an incomplete 21-year-old build for a busted game—that it’s an enormous pain in the ass to get up and running. There are some tips in this thread to help you though if you’re really intent on firing this up.

The build’s leak hasn’t just given fans of the series something to look over this week, either; it’s also given two of the most prominent men involved in the game’s troubled development a chance to air their grievances. Posting on Apogee’s official site, Scott Miller has written a post called, “The Truth About DNF,” laying the blame for the disaster at the game’s “understaffed” and “adlibbed” development and saying a plan to save the project by handing it off to Warframe developers Digital Extremes in 2004 was “shot down internally,” which “turned out to be a fatal suicide shot.”

In response, Broussard tweeted earlier today:

Scott’s a clueless narcissist whose actions are what led to the Gearbox suits/friction that led to us losing 3DR & the Duke IP. Mind blowing the nonsense he spews. Not surprising due to his depth of manipulation and narcissism. Least I’ve had the class to keep thoughts private.

I have *so* much more to say on this having known him since high school in the 70s. You can just see how he uses opportunity to try to make himself look better tossing an ex friend (of 40+ years) and biz partner under a bus. Def a guy you wanna do business with!

If you want to download and try the build out yourself, it’s available here.