I am opening up this discussion thread because I am sick and tired of Duke Nukem not being acknowledged enough and being treated as a joke rather than a legend. To add insult to injury, the lies from Gearbox’s promise that Duke would have a better future would be disregarded years after DNF's release and they did very little to nothing for the franchise by putting the bare minimum effort on later products such as Duke 3D World Tour, the Bulletstorm add-on, and even the second game in the series that was remastered had it’s soundtrack gutted out and was replaced by those from 3D, which in all honesty, I think the pandering and favoritism towards Duke Nukem 3D has gone too far in the years that followed after Forever’s release. I know nothing is going to change the franchise’s fate at this point since Gearbox doesn’t seem to care about it at all, especially since many games that used to be available on GOG.Com still haven’t returned after almost a decade after the company acquired full control of the franchise. All of these implications makes me wonder if Duke Nukem even had a real fanbase at all due to the lack of activity and discussions for the franchise's future, and the lack of respect from most gaming media sites most certainly don't help either, when all of it is just mostly DNF being recognized as one of the worst video games of all time. Maybe he did actually had a fanbase that actually cares about the series that goes beyond Duke 3D a long time ago, but as the franchise never received any new main outings in over a decade as well as DNF’s unfortunate downfall, the numbers pretty much went down after years of little to nothing to bring the king back to full glory. Was Duke Nukem 3D a one-hit wonder too successful for it’s own good? Was Duke Nukem never fit to be a fully fledged video game franchise at all? I know there’s the DNF 2001 restoration project happening right now, but with Take-Two already the current owners of Duke after they acquired Gearbox recently, I’m not so sure how much further this project will make it before something really bad happens.

If Gearbox actually did care and did something worthy or handed the franchise back to Apogee, would anyone still be interested in Duke Nukem 5 or a Duke Nukem origin story project like a Duke Begins revival? What changes would be made to give the series a much needed push in evolving the character and world around him? How do some fans feel about DNF today without the hype goggles that was built up over the years. Does Duke deserve to come back to GOG.Com with his classics along with some of his recent outings like 3D World Tour, the Bulletstorm Tour, and the Pinball M table, which probably may never happen since both Gearbox and Take-Two don't believe going DRM free in a growing all-digital future is best for business. For those that don’t know yet, the only surviving Duke related content that’s currently on GOG.Com right now is Rad Rodgers: Radical Edition, where Duke himself appears as a playable character along with Lo-Wang, Cosmo the alien and, Bombshell. I know this isn’t going to be enough to convince Gearbox to bring the franchise back, but I still would like to know if there is still care for Duke Nukem today despite not being a big name anymore, along with some challenges of changed tastes in culture of gaming today.

I am honestly not surprised that no one has bothered posting anything here or seeing this topic since the Duke Nukem series section has been pretty deserted. I do want to mark some key points here to let anyone that still cares for the Duke Nukem franchise know some important current facts as of this date.

-Next year in 2026 will mark the franchise's 35th Anniversary, not that I am expecting Gearbox will be making any plans to commemorate that milestone, but I'd be shocked if they did something like revealing the next main installment during that year. It will also mark 30 years since Duke Nukem 3D came out and 15 years since the character's last proper main game got released, which happens to be Duke Nukem Forever.

-Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered still hasn't gotten released on other platforms beyond Evercade, including some of the spin-offs like Duke Nukem Time to Kill. These are classic titles that truly deserve to be ported over to PC and brought over to GOG.com, especially since the majority of classic PC titles were taken off here almost a decade ago after Gearbox got full control of the IP.

Though the idea of wanting to see Duke Nukem brought back here to GOG.com along with some of his last recent titles like Duke Nukem Forever, 3D World Tour, and the Bulletstorm DLC sounds like complete wishful thinking, It would be nice to see the legacy of this franchise live on completely DRM-Free. As for the idea of Duke Nukem 5 happening, I would still want that game to happen just to give the king a possible last proper ride he deserves if necessary due to Gearbox's lack of passion in the IP when compared to their other ones like Borderlands, but this company has spent about the same amount of time Duke Nukem Forever took in development and did nothing to right the wrongs of DNF's shortcomings with a new game to follow up on, and I find that to be very disheartening. The best direction that should be taken for Duke 5 to stay true to the formula is to have inspirations from many action packed movies and not random memes on the internet for references, while combining the best elements of Duke 3D's fast paced combat and level designs and DNF's impressive amount of interactivity with many objects from arcade machines to drivable vehicles by bringing them to new heights. Randy's new design paradigm statement years ago has not aged well, and Gearbox should just play it safe by making another average adventure of Duke saving the world from aliens again, kind of like what id did with DOOM 4 when they reintroduced the DOOM series, but knowing Gearbox's true colors after all these years of how they treated the Duke IP, that is most unlikely ever going to happen, but I could be wrong.

The games are not available here anymore, and after Duke Nukem 3D the entire franchise is kind of actually dead. And 1 and 2 were not that great (I remember playing them because I wanted to have the "whole story" given how 3D starts right at the end of 2) but they are so radically different from the 3rd installment that they might as well be different franchises.

The King is dead... tired, in bed, with some models paid by the tax payers haha. Let's leave him rest. He deserves it.

Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem 2 weren't great games. They were fun, but they were arcade side scrollers built as shareware, designed to make Apogee money because that's how Apogee made money back then - shareware.

Duke 3D was the first "real" Duke game, and pretty much the only one.

Duke Nukem Forever was fun, sort of, but nowhere on the level of Duke Nukem 3D, and I think I got to the stage where you play as a miniature car and then just kind of forgot about it.

Gearbox did Duke dirty, for sure, but he never had a great career to begin with. He was an anti hero, the cool sprite that loosely resembled Arnold from Commando, on purpose. Apogee/3DRealms are the ones who really put him in the grave.

After Prey, they just kind of stopped doing anything with their IP to speak of for a while. I think the Rise of the Triad remake in 2013 was the first time they'd done anything worth mentioning in a very long time.

It's sad, and it's not trivial, but Duke is a relic of days gone by. Masculinity isn't celebrated anymore, and the type of humor that made his games memorable isn't really desirable by the hedge fund crew, and they are the ones who now call the shots on most games.

I would love as much as anyone to have a spiritual successor to Duke Nukem 3D. Hell, I'd love if Prey 2 had actually come out, for that matter.

But that's not the timeline we live in. And sometimes, you just need to let the dead rest in peace.

Since fourteen years have passed the day Duke Nukem Forever finally came out, which ironically is about the same time it took for it to be made and released, I may as well share some of my own thoughts on Duke's legacy and the current situation the franchise is in as of June 2025.

Despite being radically different from what most people know Duke for, I personally feel that the first two games don’t really get enough appreciation for being what they are. I won’t act like they are game changers, but they are still an important part of the main series of Duke’s history. The music tracks in Duke 2, I find them to be a lot more memorable than most of the tunes from 3D, and it’s unfortunate that the remastered versions on Evercade had to take out the whole original soundtrack due to past conflict on a royalty lawsuit between Bobby Prince and Gearbox years ago.

As much as I love Duke 3D and always will, that is my main issue with about how everyone is saying it is the only “good” Duke Nukem game. It has become too overrated where I cannot stand in seeing what a big deal it really is, with most of the same material from that title being re-used for other projects like the Pinball M table. I honestly really wished that some fans would at least explore and resonate more with some of Duke’s other outings instead of just loving one single title and nothing else beyond the franchise.

I know DNF will never be a favorite for many, and I still have a soft spot for it despite many changes I hated like the weapon limit and regenerating health, but it really missed the mark in being a great followup to Duke 3D, and it most certainly doesn’t come close to being one of the worst video games ever made. It’s a true miracle that DNF actually came out back in 2011, because had stayed in development much longer, it would have been a lot worse than the version we ended up getting.

I still have not forgiven Randy Pitchford and Gearbox for what they have done to Duke by promising fresh new installments, only to lie about it years later shortly after the World Tour version of Duke 3D and the Bulletstorm DLC were released. While I do not believe Duke's career in being a franchise was a complete fluke and could have evolved with some compelling ideas, the choices George Broussard made in wanting to add more than necessary in DNF would ultimately sealed IP's fate in being acquired by another game company that has no passion or respect in giving it a proper revival or maybe perhaps one last fulfilling ride.

After the way DNF ended, pulling the plug on the franchise right out of the blue feels completely unjust, and it deserves at least one more main entry to go out on before being put to rest for good. But after seeing how the game industry is allowing physical releases to contain no full game built onto the disc/cartridge and instead requiring a full download like with DOOM: The Dark Ages and those game key-cards made for the Switch 2, maybe it is better for Duke not to receive a new game at this point right now. Honestly, I would rather see the majority of his catalog be brought back to GOG.Com as a top priority along with his recent last outings like DNF and 3D World Tour, but I don’t think Gearbox and Take-Two would even care enough to do anything right in keeping the king’s legacy preserved, as if not wanting to make a new fifth main entry for the past fourteen years after the last main title's release wasn’t more than enough already.