9 Games That Spent the Longest Time in Development Hell

The old saying goes, “Good things come to those who wait.” Well, there are some video game players out there who know that this simply isn’t the case every time.

Some games take insane amounts of time to come out, and sometimes that wait just isn’t worth it. Naturally, there are times when it absolutely is, but it seems like it can be a real coin flip sometimes.

As such, we will be taking a look at a bunch of games that took forever to come out! Did your highly anticipated game live up to the hype?

Shenmue III — 18 years

The Shenmue series has always been a bit on the odd, experimental side. The first two games in the series had a super in-depth simulation feel to them. As it turns out, however, video games aren’t hyper realistic in many ways for the sake of fun. Be that as it may, many fans enjoyed the Shenmue series for the gameplay, story, and characters.

Shenmue II released in 2001. Then the series disappeared until a Kickstarter campaign finally breathed some life into the long dead sequel. Fans clamored to see the adventure continue and finally got their wish in 2019.

This 18-year wait resulted in a game that was met with a lot of mixed feelings and none of them overly positive. Plus, the game chose to leave the story open to more sequels. This was rather than finally giving closure to players who had been waiting for so long.

Duke Nukem Forever — 15 years

Just to get it out of the way, this game wasn’t great.

It definitely had the chance to be a great callback to the FPS games of the 1990s, but that clearly didn’t happen! Whereas games such as Wolfenstein: The New Order and DOOM 2016 took classic franchises and reinvented them for modernity, Duke Nukem Forever just kinda hung out in the ’90s.

Development started in 1996, but the game didn’t come out until 2011. Atrocious humor, dated mechanics, and a basically nonexistent story were the results of a 15-year game development. That has never stopped being impressive.