Duke Nukem Forever Metalist

Posted byRandall 218 Comments on Duke Nukem Forever Metalist

Now that the Duke Nukem Forever project is dead (until it’s sold off and picked up by someone else), there’s a lot of renewed interest in the hilarious list of things that took less time than the Duke Nukem Forever development process.  It lists things such as the Beatles’ entire music career and World War II plus the Manhattan Project.

What struck me was that the list itself has been around a long time.  I was laughing at it years ago, and though it was updated just today, most of the items on it still date back to the original list (circa late 2005/early 2006, I think).

So I present to you — and read this carefully; it’s not a mistake — a list of things that happened since the List of Things That Have Happened Since Duke Nukem Forever Was Announced was written.

  • Barack Obama announced his candidacy, slogged through the longest Presidential campaign in American history, and was elected.
  • Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans and wiped out much of the Gulf Coast.
  • Ehud Olmert came to power in Israel, pursued a war against Lebanon, and was succeeded by Netanyahu.
  • Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito have had their entire Supreme Court careers since the list was written.
  • The world panicked over bird flu, calmed down, panicked over swine flu, and apparently dodged a bullet.
  • The iPhone was announced, released, and developed to the point where it could make fart noises.
  • Windows Vista was released, sputtered a bit, and is now reaching the end of its life cycle.

Additionally, the List of Things That Took Less Time Than the Duke Nukem Forever Development has been circulating for longer than each of these things took:

  • The release of all three Lord of the Rings movies
  • The painting of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel (or, will be true in a few months)
  • World War I (nearly; age of list is uncertain)
  • The development of Windows 95 from Windows 3.1
  • The construction of the Empire State Building
  • The entire run of the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers show plus the first movie.
  • The premier of Firefly, its cancellation, its growth into a geek classic, and the subsequent greenlighting, filming and release of Serenity.

218 replies on “Duke Nukem Forever Metalist”

  3. My life has no meaning now.

    Anyway, before 3DRealms went *fup*, they released some screenies. (click my name)

    Oh, and did anyone notice that DNF also stands for Did Not Finish? 😉

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  4. Duke Nukem TAKING Forever more like! Hahahalol!

    (I bet I’m the first person ever to have come up with that phrase.)

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  6. The release of DNF was one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse, so let us thank the brave procastinators of 3D Realms for preventing it from coming to pass. After all, Chinese Democracy was released and the United States elected a black man to the office of President of the US, we already had 2 of the other signs down in a short space of time.

    All the same, someone hunt down Mandy Patinkin and make sure there’s no Dead Like Me revival. Can’t be too careful.

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  8. I’m going to make a lame pun: It isn’t Duke Nukem Forever but Duke Nuken TOOK Forever.

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  10. How about the List of Things That Took More Time Than the Duke Nukem Forever Development? Only human-made things, please.

    Point one:
    – the HURD development

    SCNR

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  13. Wow, amazing to think that Rick Astley went from being a forgotten joke, to being a bizarre internet meme, to being a world-wide sensation, to jumping the shark and becoming a forgotten joke all over again in less time than it took for Duke Nukem Forever to go tits up.

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  14. DNF has been in production for half of my entire life.

    Of note is that Serious Sam 2, which was released 4 years ago, actually contained jokes *specifically at the expense of DNF*… in other words, DNF was in dev long enough to become a joke, Croteam had the time to make an entire game including a reference to that joke, and still released it 4 years before dev on DNF was finally aborted.

    On another note, my captcha made me type “£”. That’s not exactly easy for someone on a US keyboard.

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  15. Pingback: ????? ?? ?? ????? » ?????? ????? » Duke Nukem Forever: ????

  16. Yet, at the rate that Blizzard’s going, the Starcraft 2 development might not make it onto that list….

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  17. 5th earth: when you see something funny looking in a ReCAPTCHA, that’s the word that the computer doesn’t recognize. Just type “FUCK YOU LUIS” instead.

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  19. “Windows Vista was released, sputtered a bit, and is now reaching the end of its life cycle.”

    Don’t forget Windows Me, 2000 and XP, none of which had even been announced when development started on DNF.

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  20. Pingback: Notes for 5/10/2009 at MasterMaq’s Blog

  22. “Windows Vista was released, sputtered a bit, and is now reaching the end of its life cycle.”

    Don’t forget Windows Me, 2000 and XP, none of which had even been announced when development started on DNF.

    I’m actually editing my post to make this even more clear (I tried to use bold and colored links and spend two paragraphs making this as clear as possible) — my list is not about things younger than DNF. It’s about things younger than the DNF list, which is on another website. All of you who keep emailing me things that are younger than DNF to add to the list, you have the wrong guy and I suspect you didn’t read the non-list part of my post.

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  23. Well, there goes the best line of April Fools jokes in existence.

    I was gonna do a DNF teaser, then a cut to Rickroll for 2010…

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  24. @5th earth

    Same here. Which is amusing. Especially all the jokes that were made when it actually might get released. I remember reading in Gamesmaster ‘With the production of DNF actually taking forever…’

    Anyone else think they all just sat in a room and just smoked geek cigarettes?

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  27. It took me a while to identify that “Metalist” is “meta-list”.

    I thought you were going to talk about Metal.

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  28. Should be added to the list: Alexander the Great’s ascension to the throne of Macedonia and subsequent conquering of the known world.

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  29. You know, honestly…

    I want a company and to be paid money to NOT work. To make a fake game trailer every two years and just sit back and let the money roll in with empty promises.

    These people are scammer gods. Whats sad is even taking the easy road of coasting on others money. If they released a new game every 2-3 years based on Duke they would have probley made fifty times as much as they leeched. Who cares how much more pc’s and graphics advanced….zero product for this long was just amazing.

    I hope every last one of them is smart enough to not put down this company or this project on a resume….cause your never working in the game market again.

    You never see. “Videogame programmer. 150k a year. Need a lazy, trailer making, no modivation employee. Lying a must, no product needed, just make screen shots every 6 months, photoshop doctoring a must!

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  31. Randall, just thought I’d highlight the proximity of Nathan’s face to Summer’s rather stunning looking thigh in this image.

    That race coming along nicely then, hmm?

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  33. Carlston said:
    >> I want a company and to be paid money to NOT work.

    A surer bet is to become a farmer…

    Carlston said:
    >> smart enough to not put down this company or this project on a resume

    They’ll have to change their names; the goodbye picture is captioned.

    Jimbo said:
    >> is it bad that I know the ascii for pound sign?

    I wonder if it would take ASCII 35 (#) …

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  34. Michael… # is a hash 😀
    £ £ £ £ £ £ heeee I’m having fun here. Shift-3 £ :p
    Or even ctrl-alt-4… € € € € €

    Which conveniently is the Quake 2 logo turned on its side.

    Though it’s on the wrong site, another thing that’s taken longer than DNF – the entire school career of a daughter of a friend of a friend who’s taken to bothering me on MSN. She was kindergarten age when it was announced. Now old enough to be learning to drive and conning her way into bars. Eep.
    (and hell, I hadn’t done any of my school exams when it was announced; been all the way thru that, upper school, university and follow on college courses; since the original list was published I’ve done 3 vocational IT qualifications and part of a previous dead-end medical technician one, and had about 4 jobs. Maybe I should have applied to 3DR?)

    I just realised something though. We’ve all been played the world’s longest running, mistimed april fools joke. What else is the acronym DNF usually used for?

    Running and motor races. When a competitor drops out.

    “Did Not Finish”

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  35. PS I know a better ascii code – the one-byte smiley. Alt-0252 — ü

    and its parent, alt-0220 — Ü

    don’t surprise them though or they’ll turn into alt-0246 and alt-0214 — ö & Ö

    hehehe
    captcha: organ development

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  36. I hate to be this guy, but I just can’t help it:

    It’s medalist, not metalist.

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  39. This idea is brilliant. Thus, in the best tradition of inventors everywhere, I’m ripping it off to give you: A list of things that happened since a list of things that happened since the List of Things That Have Happened Since Duke Nukem Forever Was Announced was written was written.

    -President Obama gave his first commencement address.
    -The Nuggets advanced to the Western Conference Finals
    -Craigslist made it more difficult to advertise prostitution
    -That’s about it.

    Additionally, the list of things that have taken less time than the List of Things That Took Less Time Than the Duke Nukem Forever Development has been circulating for has been circulating for longer than each of these things took:

    – Parts of The Big Bang, including The Inflationary Epoch
    – The creation of this list

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  40. tahrey wrote:

    >> Michael… # is a hash 😀

    Yes, I’ve seen that on the Internet, but everyone around here calls it “pound”. I also live about 5 miles from 3DR, so…there! 🙂

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  42. In the US we call # pound but usually it’s in reference to the # key on a telephone (computerized call centers may ask you to press the “pound key”). It is on the US keyboard but it’s rarely if ever used. Actually I think it’s the least used of all the shift+numeric keys, at least for me. the ` ~ key might be close if it counted, but even then I just use it because ~ opens the console in Quake-based games (including Source engine games).

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  43. @Dan

    I used the # symbol frequently where I used to work as an engineer for a industrial equipment manufacturer. (things along the lines of 40,000# steel pressure vessels) we would use it instead of “lbs.” It was also used by our steel plate suppliers and by some of our customers.

    We’d also use ~ quite a bit to designate approximate weight. Intel would get all bent out of shape if we didn’t make clear that the weight listed on the blue prints was calculated from the parts going into it and not an exact measured weight of their ~20,000# stainless steel tank.

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  44. Israel did not “pursued a war against Lebanon”.
    Hezbollah abducted 2 Israeli soldiers (as they have done previously).
    And as a result Israel was forced to take military action.
    Israel went to war against Hezbollah not against Lebanon.

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  48. @bionicamoeba

    Yeh, I’d hate to be “that guy” too, because in this case “that guy” was a moron…

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  49. What I don’t understand is what will the internet now do without this staple of Vaporware lists and tech meme jokes? Even thought everyone was getting tired of the joke, it was almost like that annoying uncle that you can’t stand but miss if they don’t show up to xmas.

    Captcha: 20 Fibs (Guess that’s a requirement I need to meet today)

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  50. The site was just updated, now with a second preorder, more fun facts, and the kicker – the first of the two metalists here (Eli didn’t go so meta as to post the second one as well). (disclosure: I suggested a few facts and am credited in there).

    And you know the best thing? Planet Duke (as I type this post) and its DNF FAQ are still not updated with the news. Perhaps they’re in denial…

    @Bobcat: No; Napoleon’s time as an emperor (1804-1814/15, depending how you count his return) was shorter than the development of DNF, but he was practically speaking the ruler since his coup in 1799.

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