Despite netting some poor critical scores, Duke Nukem Forever for the Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, and PC from Gearbox Software and Take-Two Interactive has certainly sparked lots of discussion.  I'm still working my way through the adventure (currently I'm stuck on a part of the game involving a barrage of raging brutal pigs from outer space that slaughter me as soon as my saved progress reloads), but I can certainly look back at the game's fourteen years worth of development to see what changed over the years and what was struck from the title entirely.  1UP has an interesting video feature that chronicles the evolution of Duke Nukem Forever as it changed form across teasers and trailers. 

Obviously, the game conceived of in 1997 bears little resemblance to the DNF we got in 2011 -- or does it? We've combed through all of the game's available footage and found certain key sections and ideas that survived through the years. We boiled our findings down to the following video, and you can find large versions of the trailers we used along with our detailed observations below. A word of advice -- the video uses a picture-in-picture format so you might want to watch it in full-screen in HD if you can.

There's undoubtedly more material that came and went then we're seeing here, but this is a great look into the seemingly neverending development process.  You just know that there are so many stories about this game's history that have yet to be told by those who worked on it and watched closely from the sidelines.  Duke Nukem Forever's legacy is not to be an enjoyable game or a terrible game, but to be an example of what happens when development spirals out of control and insane amounts of time and money are squandered in the pursuit of the unattainable truly 100% perfect video game.