Library of Congress claims to have found the source code for an unknown Duke Nukem game

The Library of Congress believes that it has found the source code of a never-released version of the portable game Duke Nukem: Critical Mass, found among the games filed for copyright registration, writes The Verge. Critical Mass was released on Nintendo DS in 2011. It was originally supposed to be the beginning of a new trilogy, but she received terrible reviews, like her older brother Duke Nukem Forever.

Not surprisingly, the creation of the next game was minimized. But David Gibson, an employee of the Library of Congress, tells in a blog that he found a game that did not see the release: a PSP version that differs significantly from its Nintendo version. Gibson is still trying to restore the game, but he has already found game music and assembled Duke’s basic 3D model in a rocket pack.

In the United States, each work is automatically protected by copyright, but in order to sue for damages, authors must officially register their work in the Library of Congress by sending a copy of their book, game, film, or other project that will be reviewed and possibly forever taken for storage. As digital materials were distributed, the Library became one of the few places to permanently store ephemeral media, although not everything gets space in the library’s archives. Video games and other software, heavily dependent on hardware that is time-affected and obsolete, is a particular problem for archivists, whether in the Library of Congress or the museum, or in a private collection.
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Of course, even fans of the franchise did not feel impatient about the frames of Critical Mass. The game however adds another chapter to the saga, the mysterious ghost of which managed to return from year to year. Gamers spent more than ten years, watching trailers and frame leaks from Duke Nukem Forever. When the game finally came out in 2011, it seems that there is nothing left in it, which they have not yet seen. However, Duke, apparently, still have some secrets in stock. And the Library of Congress fulfilled its task as a repository of knowledge that the rest of the world would probably prefer to forget.