So rarely does such unbridled perfection fall into my lap. Yet, here we are. Remember Duke Nukem? Once upon a time, ol’ Dukie was one of the most recognizable names in the business! For the uninitiated, Duke Nukem started his life as a respectable 2D side-scrolling fella. However, it wasn’t until his third DOOM-inspired game, Duke Nukem 3D, that he really started gaining popularity. Imagine the most “masculine man” to ever hold a gun and turn that dial up to 100. That was Duke Nukem in a, er… generously abridged nutshell.
Then, eventually, 2011’s Duke Nukem Forever would torpedo the franchise entirely. It was a game that, for a while, held the Guinness world record for the longest development cycle of a video game. (A record I believe was eventually broken by Beyond Good and Evil 2 — though I don’t think it’s been made official as of this writing.) In short: Forever was a horrible, awful, just-plain-bad game. The franchise’s demise was particularly difficult for one Jon St. John, a prominent voice actor. St. John was the voice of Nukem throughout the majority of the franchise.
…Who, indeed, also voiced Sonic the Hedgehog mainstay, Big the Cat. Not in every Sonic game he’s appeared in, granted, but in more than enough of them to send me into hysterics. Recently, St. John took to Facebook to lament Nukem’s long-dormant status. In fact, he teased (perhaps jokingly) the creation of a Kickstarter to help him formally purchase the IP from Take-Two Interactive.
where’s my big the cat/duke nukem road trip game?
Honestly, St. John? I can’t imagine you’d need to raise that much money to buy Duke Nukem at this point. The IP may as well be an unactivated nuclear warhead. How do you make a modern-day Duke Nukem without it being horrendously… “out of touch,” I’ll say. Then again, there’s — sadly — an audience for a hypothetical resurrection of the property.
Have him make fun of pronouns, say that women’s suffrage was a mistake, and proudly work for a psychotic billionaire. Much to my chagrin, it’d sell like hotcakes to a certain crowd.
The post Duke Nukem, Who Was Also Big the Cat, Apparently Wants to Buy His Franchise Back Through Crowdfunding appeared first on VICE.
The post Duke Nukem, Who Was Also Big the Cat, Apparently Wants to Buy His Franchise Back Through Crowdfunding appeared first on VICE.
