Duke Nukem Forever may have been banished to development hell, but the Duke's story isn't done. Aside from Apogee and Deep Silver's Duke Nukem Trilogy for the PSP and DS, Apogee says that 2K Games is also working on another Duke Nukem game.

This comes from GamePolitics' inspection into a court document filed by Apogee Software on Friday. You'll recall that there's a legal battle currently going on between Apogee and Take Two over the aborted Duke Nukem Forever project.

The document reveals that back in October 2007, Apogee and 2K Games entered into an agreement wherein the latter got exclusive rights to develop a new game based on the Duke Nukem franchise.

This game -- which the document clarifies is not DNF -- was given the working title "Duke Begins". The original development schedule had it pegged for a mid-2010 release. The document continues:

Take Two and/or its subsidiary 2K Games halted or otherwise cancelled all development work by the third-party game developer on the Duke Begins game in April 2009... without Apogee's approval or consent...

When Apogee confronted Take-Two and 2K Games about the... cancellation of the Duke Begins development work... Take-Two and 2K Games simply denied it... Take-Two and 2K Games are taking such actions with a goal of pressuring Apogee to sell the Duke Nukem franchise rights to Take-Two for less than their true value.

GamePolitics contacted a Take Two rep but the company declined to comment because of the ongoing court proceedings.

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