If you're anything like us, you may well peruse eBay every so often in the hopes of picking up a cheeky bargain. Complete-In-Box copy of Wave Race 64 starting at 99p, eh? That's got to be worth a speculative bid, no? However, it's rare that anything we bid on doesn't get sniped at the last minute, and even the things we win couldn't be called 'rare'.
However, some lucky gamer has managed to snag a prototype for a previously unknown Duke Nukem game for Nintendo DS. The game carries the imaginative title 'Duke Nukem DS' (not to be confused with side-scrolling platform shooter Duke Nukem: Critical Mass which did release on the console) and came on a development cartridge. It appears to have been developed by MachineWorks Northwest, a studio responsible for a number of Duke Nukem mobile games.
As explored by DScapades in a recent video, this isn't just a sketchy prototype but a substantial chunk of an unreleased FPS, with a total of 28 levels and a multiplayer mode included. After doing some digging, DScapades discovered that the game is in fact a port of a Duke game released for the Tapwave Zodiac, an obscure and largely forgotten mobile console from the early 2000s.
You can check out the video below for the full story on this hidden chapter in the Duke's console history:
From the look of the footage, Duke fans would probably have done much better with this on DS rather than the disappointing Critical Mass, a game with a sobering score of 29 on Metacritic.
Would you have given this a go on your trusty DS Phat/Lite ? Let us know what you think below.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 37
What could of been eh?
Gearbox have more or less killed this franchise off now.
A damn shame, considering how much money they paid for it too.
@Madder128 what indication did you read into that suggested the franchise was dead? It’s still very much alive, albeit in suspended animation.
Hell yeah, now dump it, bidder!
Meh, for those who don't know that game was gonna be a port of Duke Nukem Mobile for Nintendo DS. If you bought a Tapwave Zodiac Palm OS handheld back in 2004, you probably may already got the full version of the game.
If this had been released it would be in my collection.
@retro_player_77 you mean exactly like it says in the article. Fascinating.
@retro_player_77 : Slightly off-topic, but I would kill for a port of Orcs and Elves 2, which was released exclusively on mobile devices (pre-smartphone era). Orcs and Elves, which received an enhanced port on DS (and was iD's only game on the system) is one of my favourite games of all time. Such an underrated gem. It's a dungeon crawler with RPG elements and has graphics that are highly reminiscent of DOOM (albeit in a fantasy setting). Some handheld/mobile iterations of major franchises also don't get enough love. The early Sims games on GBA/DS are also among my favourite games of all (though the latter stuff were among the worst commercial games ever made).
I was up all night playing Duke Nukem Forever
Still have my copy of Duke Nukem for the GBA. I always thought it was an imprssive port.
I had been looking forward to the rumoured Duke Nukem games for DS (fairly sure 3 were supposed to be in development? CV and G or NoM article?), Then Critical mass released and was a steaming pile. Most people assumed the others were likely as bad.
This however, would have Rocked the DS. Definitely needed more N64 esque shooters on DS, massive gap in the market for them.
I hope that they're successful in dumping this cart for preservation purposes. It shouldn't be particularly difficult to do, 3DS hacking can achieve this task with a common setup.
@j_whitfield8 "It's okay to fail grammar if people understand you."
That doesn't mean you shouldn't correct them. It's better to educate the uneducated than let them spread misinformation because no one told them they were wrong.
@j_whitfield8 You're saying that as long as we can understand poor grammar, it doesn't need to be corrected. You must've been your English teacher's favorite student...
And does it matter where someone makes these grammatical errors? Be it on a Nintendo fan site or on social media for everyone to see, I don't see how it matters. If they type "could of" here, chances are they type it like that wherever they go.
@j_whitfield8 Okay, so you grew up through the '80s or '90s, which was the last time people would unironically say "bad" meaning "good." That just makes it even more sad that you just accept poor grammar at your age. And there isn't a teacher alive who would use "bad" to describe a student's performance in their class without it actually meaning "bad." You're telling me to decide how to interpret it, but it's not a hard decision in the slightest.
@NoNoseNosferatu other than World Tour, what else has come out recently?
The point I was trying to get across, is I feel Gearbox are wasting that IP by doing nothing with it.
The longer they leave it, the less relevant Duke becomes.
@Madder128 ohhh- gotcha.
It's kinda cool, but tbh if this had been released no one would care about it. It needed serious work to even be a passable game. More mechanics, details, level redesign and expansion. It looks so lazy, worst of all is they did make some decent environments but did nothing with them. Maybe the tapwave had more limitations but even then they could have done a better job.
Duke Nukem Advance was one of the best shooters for the Game Boy Advance. I wonder why this was never released?
@Kanbei "Still have my copy of Duke Nukem for the GBA. I always thought it was an imprssive port."
Duke Nukem Advance wasn't a port, it was an entirely new game made specifically for the GBA.
@KayFiOS From a linguistic standpoint, "proper grammar" is an artificial construct. Language is defined by how it's used and not by prescriptive rules.
Damn, I'm surprised by how people will make up whatever BS will justify the F they got on their English test in middle school. "I'm not the one who's wrong, my teacher is wrong for saying I'm wrong." It's not a matter of perspective, there ARE rules set for what qualifies as proper grammar, and you mouth-breathers can try to tell me otherwise, but I'll just ignore all of you. Done trying to explain English to people that deliberately choose to make their own idiotic rules.
Hmm it kinda looks like the little known Tapwave Zodiac version of the game.
@KayFiOS what he was saying was there’s no reason to “correct” people on thier grammar on the internet. Especially forums. It’s a waste of a post, no one cares, and you just come off like a jerk doing it. You want to DM someone about it go ahead but leave it off the board.
Please.
@JayJ that’s exactly what it is
@Strictlystyles If that's what they meant, they would've said that instead of defending the poor grammar. They were trolling, plain and simple. There's nothing constructive about what they're saying, they're just trying to contradict others for the sake of it. At least when I contradict someone, it's with actual facts, and I'm not just spouting idiocy, and it's in the hopes of having taught someone the proper way to type something.
@KayFiOS Wow of all the ***** on this site and there's lots you're the top one, my god
I do remember they announced three Duke Nukem games for the DS one year at E3... and this was when Forever was still an unreleased meme game.
@Sun-WuGoku lol oh so me correcting people's grammar and trying to be constructive makes me worse than all the ***** who come here just to troll Nintendo fans. Lol okay. Crawl back in your hole, son.
@KayFiOS ah man, I'm typing quick as I'm in work.
@Madder128 My problem isn't with you, and I can certainly understand typing in a rush while at work (guess what I'm doing right now!), it's the trolls that jumped on @status-204 for correcting you, and subsequently me for correcting them, and the Goku pfp whose name I can't remember cos I blocked him for treating me like a reincarnation of Hitler for giving a damn about grammar. There are few pettier reasons I could think of to hate someone.
@Madder128 I guess gearbox decided it was time to abort this whole freaking franchise
@ecco6t9 do you have a complete DS collection? I'd like to ask you a couple quick questions. Could you email me? [email protected] thank you
Man, this game looks pretty bad
@j_whitfield8 that's a stupid excuse to not spell things correctly
@j_whitfield8 he was straight up wrong and so are you
@MBII What the hell are you talking about? Gender is a biological fact. Languages, on the other hand, are created by human cultures and change based on usage.
@DScapades not quite. Had this be released it would be in my collection simply because it is an old school FPS and being a Tapwave Zodiac port would of made me keep it.
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