Wired's Vaporware 2008 Awards

by Marco Chiappetta — Sunday, January 04, 2009, 07:06 PM EDT

Wired has posted their list of annual Vaporware awards, and you'll never guess what tops the list yet again this year. Yes, you guessed it--Duke Nukem Forever. The 12-year (and counting) development cycle and subsequent leaks of screenshots, game footage, and what have you of DNF, has got to be one of the longest running jokes in the industry...this game can't possibly still be in development...

"After some twelve (12!) years in development, we had given up all hope of ever seeing Duke Nukem Forever hit the shelves. We even held a high-level meeting in the Wired newsroom where we agreed to end the agony and, some vague promises to the press about a 2008 release notwithstanding, leave Duke off the Vaporware list this year. Even the best jokes get old eventually.

Says reader Dennis Murphy: "My nominations for DNF got printed in 2001 & 2002. Here we are, 7 years later, and it's still on the list. How about one more chance? If we don't see it by 2010, I promise I'll stop submitting! (Well, at least till my grandkids are born ...)"

But then, in May, Jace Hall of Crackle.com scored an on-camera interview with the Dukefathers, George Broussard and Scott Miller of 3-D Realms. At the end of their sit-down, the DNF developers even let him demo an actual, working version of the game.

The resulting hand-held footage of the first-person shooter was all the proof we needed — the game is still inching towards reality. So congrats, Duke. You're the King of Vaporware once again."

Thankfully there a bunch of other products to check out, which are much more interesting. Although I think one of them is fairly close to being released based on some screenshots we posted the other day. Wait a minute--not more screenshots. Maybe Garmin is taking a page from the 3DRealms playbook?

Tags: wired, vaporware, DNF, duke nukem forever

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com