Sad news today as Video Game Developer 3D Realms closes its doors due to lack of funding. If you’ve been around computers for a while then you might remember a couple of little titles that 3D Realms developed called Wolfenstein 3d and Duke Nukem 3D.

Growing up, these were THE games to play. Back in the day when computers had 25MHz processors and 4 Megs of RAM, these games were cutting edge! Duke Nukem 3D even included network play so you could play against other players on remote computers… ah, how many hours of college did I waste doing that!

Although I feel bad that 3D Realms is closing, it’s hard to feel sorry for them as they spent the last 12 years, yes, 12 years working on their next game, which is aptly titled “Duke Nukem Forever”… we’re guessing because that’s how long they were planning on taking to develop it. Publisher Take-Two has decided that it will no longer fund the development of the game because it’s taken too long, and they’re not close to a finished product.

But all is not lost, Take-Two Publishing is retaining the writes to the “Duke Nukem” name and plans to continue development of the franchise, but this time with someone who might actually finish the game!

“Development of the Duke Nukem Trilogy is continuing as planned and further announcements about upcoming games will be made in the near future,” said a statement from Apogee Games, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens. Keep your fingers crossed but I wouldn’t hold my breathe if I were you!