April 1: The Day Duke Nukem Forever Was Meant to Go Gold

No, this is not an April Fool's joke: Today was the day that the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever was scheduled to go gold.

It's April 1, also known as April Fool's Day, and for good reason: It's the day that people act silly, pull pranks and, more specific to the game industry, release all sorts of occasionally-funny press releases about new products that amuse readers and drive news writers insane. But in an interesting twist, April 1 of this year was also meant to be the day that Take-Two Interactive pulled a double-reverso-prank on all of us by announcing, for real, that Duke Nukem Forever had finally gone gold.

"MOMENT OF SILENCE PLEASE: By the 3DR/TTWO development schedule, April 1st, 2010 was supposed to be the day Duke Nukem Forever went gold," former Take-Two Producer Jason Bergman wrote on Twitter earlier today, revealing what may be the greatest April Fool's joke that never was. "Totally intentional. It was going to be hilarious."

And hilarious it would have been, as gamers around the world struggled to figure out whether the announcement was real or just more chain-yanking from the most infamous piece of vaporware of all time. Unfortunately, as we all know by now, things didn't work out to be quite so funny: DNF went belly-up for good in May 2009, resulting in a legal struggle between Take-Two and Duke developer 3D Realms that's still ongoing.

Too bad, really. That would've been a good one.

Source: The Cut Scene