April Fool's Watch: Duke Nukem Forever demo DOES NOT EXIST but DNF almost went gold today @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on April 01, 2010

News: Duke Nukem, the king of April Fool's Day!

Here's a Duke Nukem two-fer for your April Fool's afternoon.

FilePlanet posted a demo of Duke's biggest game ever, Duke Nukem Forever. Clocking in at just a little under 1 GB, the file is yours for the taking.

Sadly, the file is named "AprilFools.zip" and, instead of a demo, it includes a collection of Duke Nukem sound effects.

While the demo is obviously a fake, had history gone differently, there's a possibility 3D Realms would have made a real demo of Duke Nukem available today as Producer Jason Bergman (via Twitter) has revealed that Duke Nukem Forever was originally scheduled to go gold on April Fool's Day, 2010:

MOMENT OF SILENCE PLEASE: by the 3DR/TTWO development schedule, April 1st, 2010 was supposed to be the day Duke Nukem Forever went gold.

Totally intentional. It was going to be hilarious.

Of course, we all know how things really turned out. 3D Realms was closed down in May 2009 and the DNF development staff was let go. Although rumors abound that the game is still in development somewhere.

April Fool's Day Rating: Thumbs down to FilePlanet's stale joke. But a big double-fisted Duke salute to 3D Realms for what would have been the awesomest April No-Fool's joke ever.

What could have been, right?