Eurogamer: "Library of Congress discovers unreleased PSP Duke Nukem game"

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...ress-discovers-unreleased-psp-duke-nukem-game

 

Sad when the Library of Congress gets excited about some stuff that I already do on a regular basis. They should hire me, I am qualified.

 

WOW!!!!!! That is amazing!!!

I didn't know that the library of congress has video games. Who knows, maybe they even have betas of Ocarina of Time and Resident Evil 4.

 

Very cool. I remember the DS version not being so hot, so hopefully this version is a little more solid. I wonder what other unreleased materials they have locked up in their vaults. Maybe this will bring on some extra attention to unreleased discoveries.

 

That's not sad, that's a job opportunity! I mean, you'd probably have one of the best résumé for that job! But you'd have never to release stuff again I suppose...

I always felt like this forum was some kind of a museum itself.

 

It's worth pointing out that the 'Library of Congress' is probably the last place in the world where you (or anyone) could actually go there and play this (or any other) game.

Nice discovery, but utterly meaningless.

On the other hand, I guess it proves it exists so the logical step would be to find it via other channels.

This does raise an interesting question - What exactly is the point of the Library of Congress 'preserving' video games nobody will ever be able to play? I believe they do the same with books, films, music, etc.

 

Well I guess in 100 years some people could restore old videogames (a postdoc in a modern version or archaeology I guess) and make them available on some kind of form, a bit like some old books are now available online for free. All in all it means it'll be preserved for long. Now let's hope future humans don't judge our generations based on Duke Nuken!

 

Hopefully another disc surfaces, or a UMD.. More PSPreservation I guess X_x

 

If you mean the fact that they wont leak it, of course. Get use to that, it is how things will be handled in a lot of cases. But the LoC and other institutions are looking into means to make these things accessible for research.

 

In response to some of the previous questions, the LoC collects at least a single copy of anything registered by trademark in the United States or submitted of free will in addition to government records and the like. It isn't just books; there's manuscripts, audio recordings, film, building and ship plans, military correspondance, and computer code. They're basically a knowledge node and information research institute--the largest in the US. They aren't the only library in the US that collects virtually any kind of media but they are certainly the largest and most important.

Their primary and original reason for doing so is because they are the library of congress, so any time they have a question about something, etc. that's where they'd go. The courts also use them to a fair degree. Some records are available to the general population, and some require you to submit information for approval due to the nature of the material.

They have a very strong focus on information preservation and restoration. They've been preserving and restoring early films, many of which have deteriorated or are incomplete. Some were quite notable and influential too, like Metropolis. It's a two-way process too: their advances in method are made available to other restoration societies.

It would be excellent if they could broker some plan for code analysis and research. The users on this forum have provided a wealth of game design documentation over time, and to have an even larger repository would be a boon. I'd imagine you'd be sitting behind a stack of NDAs or something of similar nature, but there's an awful lot you can learn by looking at another's implementation.

 

Given that the LoC person had to contact the PSP homebrew/emulation community to figure out all the stuff (most of the files on the DVD were in propitiatory PSP formats), I wonder if any of it's leaked already.

 

I would hope not, that would be some major incompetence on their part, and I highly doubt that would be the case.