Prerelease:Duke Nukem Forever/Early Development
This is a sub-page of Prerelease:Duke Nukem Forever.
 | This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes. |
 | To do: expansion of a few things along with source for the Batman Forever stuff |
Things were a lot more simpler before 1996; 3D Realms was known as Apogee, Duke Nukem 3D was in development and Forever wasn't a thing, yet. Despite all of this, ideas for a then hypothetical follow-up to Duke 3D were springing around and a completely unrelated project would later end up becoming the start to a very infamous development cycle.
1994
Darrin Hurd, a New Zealand-based developer from Christchurch sends Apogee/3D Realms founder Scott Miller an "in-progress demo of a side-scroller game" some time in early 1994. The team working on this platformer included Hurd as both an artist and a programmer and his friend Peter, also an artist. Hurd describes the game as following:
"Funnily enough, our original game for Apogee wasn't a Duke game. We had developed our own side scroller with hand-drawn, highly-animated characters similar to the old Prince of Persia game."[1]
Later in June, Apogee sends him a contract via fax, allowing him to continue working on it full time (which he notes is the same day his eldest son was born). Nothing expect vague details shown above is known about this project, even Hurd's interview didn't reveal a whole lot.
1995
George Broussard, during the development of Duke Nukem 3D watches Batman Forever and decides that a sequel to Duke 3D should use Forever in the title. Hurd suggests an alternative origin of Forever, stating that his game was to be known as Duke Nukem 4 Eva due to Duke falling in love with a Russian women named Eva and it being the fourth Duke title.[1] This possibly means that the Forever title had multiple origins or its just a simple coincidence that forever was such a good pun.
