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What if the infamous Duke Nukem Forever had actually been released?

On this day in history – 1997, to be exact – 3D Realms announced a new video game they were working on called Duke Nukem Forever. Back in those halcyon, optimistic days of yore the idea was that the game would be out and in consumers hot little hands no later than mid-1998.

I'll just wait here while y'all finish ROTFL.

At first they were going to put it on the Quake II engine, but there was apparently a delay before they received the actual engine code. Then at E3 their programmers got an eyeful of Epic Games sweet Unreal Engine – much better at rendering open spaces and realistic characters. So they switched to that, meaning that they essentially had to rewrite the whole game over from scratch. Another delay. Then later 3D Realms honcho George Broussard decided that he wanted to go to the Unreal II engine instead. Yet another delay. And so on, and so forth...we all know the story by now.

So...what if this thing had actually been released on time, and then went on to become a successful FPS franchise ala Quake, Unreal, Call of Duty, Halo, etc? POD is there is no delay in getting the QII code so they have even more of the game completed when they go to E3. Since at that point the thing is half finished anyway (and they've already paid Id a large sum of money for the code) they decide to stick with it.

They do a good job despite the limitations and the game is a hit. The next release, Duke Nukem Goes To Mars or whatever, is on the Unreal II engine and is an even bigger hit, and so on, possibly until today.

What, if any, influence would a successful Duke have had on the development of first person shooters? Would Broussard be filthy rich? Would 3D Realms go on to create bigger and better franchises? Would Duke be a respected gaming icon instead of a punchline??
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