> Namco had a patent on the idea of "a minigame playable during a loading screen"

Patent issued in 1998, yet there was prior art dating back to the C64 era - I remember 'invade-a-load', where you could play a Space Invaders clone while a larger game loaded from tape.

> Namco had a patent on the idea of "a minigame playable during a loading screen".

When does that date from?

Because I remember playing "Invade-a-load" on the C64 in the 80s, while waiting for (I think) Slimey's Mine to load off tape. It was fun enough that sometimes I would stop the tape and just play space invaders for a while.

(edit - ah, and there it is, at the bottom of the fast-loader article on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_loader

"In 1995, Yoichi Hayashi of Namco Ltd. invented a variant of the Invade-a-Load technique for use with optical disc based platforms such as PlayStation and applied for a patent. U.S. patent 5,718,632 was granted in February 1998 and assigned to Namco despite the Invade-a-Load prior art."

Hey, I guess that means...

Edit again: got my timelines wrong, 1995 was 30 years ago, this thing is long-expired. Ugh, I am old...)

This is also why most of the innovation in Tetris comes from the indie scene. See for example tetrio, or my own game Pandora's Blocks.

We all know that if TTC were to sue any of us, they'd be likely to lose their trademarks outright. Which is also why they haven't.

> And it's near-impossible to make a falling-tetromino puzzle game without making it look and behave like Tetris.

This just reveals a terrible lack of imagination. The games Tetris was able to challenge frankly _are_ Tetris clones, up to the point they are indistinguishable from Tetris on screenshots and gameplay.

There are a million of "falling blocks" puzzle games that have not and can not be challenged by Tetris because they are not Tetris clones. E.g. Puyo Puyo / Kirby's Avalanche, Nintendo's own Dr. Mario, Nokia's ancient "Blocks" , etc.

> nd it's near-impossible to make a falling-tetromino puzzle game without making it look and behave like Tetris.

What's more is that you cannot release a Tetris game if you follow the exact gameplay specification the Tetris Company mandates. And those specification prevent a whole range of gameplay, leading to stagnating game design and the impossibility to play some higher difficulty style of Tetris.

It's as if the First Person Company LLC mandated a Halo style floating jump with regenerating shield. There would be no classic Quake and the Doom revival series (2016, 2020, 2025) wouldn't be able to center its gameplay on agression (or at least, it would feel very weird).

> copyright on the concept

You can't have a copyright in a concept. You can only have a copyright in an expression of something.

>not loading, it avoided the patent.

The patent also expires a few months after the release of the game.

And now they've licensed at least the mobile game IP to a free-to-play vendor that's loaded up Tetris with gambling and ads.

Only teally if the t-shirt is sold online. There are many nintendo trademarks related stuff sold on flea markets.

And Nintendo cannot sue you if you are making the t-shirt for your own personal use.

Ask and you shall receive: https://i.imgur.com/XJKFlTA.png (some artistic liberties taken) My photoshop skills are still good for something I guess

Pokemon did not have breeding in the first few games. (but yeah, every artist/designer is influenced by everything)

Nintendo of America, like any U.S. company, must actively protect its trademarks or risk weakening or losing them. While the company generally seems tolerant of fan use of its copyrighted material, it’s entirely reasonable that Nintendo would want to safeguard its intellectual property, its core asset and main source of revenue, both to preserve its legal rights and maintain the integrity of its brand.

It seems that you appreciate the existence of Japanese content, but want to use it on your own terms, not theirs. Is that a fair understanding of your point of view? I think that might be the point of contention for a lot of people.

Yes, Tropic Haze LLC was behind Yuzu and Citra and Yuzu is a fork of Citra. The Switch' OS is derived from the 3DS' OS.

That's a whole new sentence

In 1989, “the US District Court for the Northern District of California presided over competing lawsuits from Atari Games and Nintendo over their console rights to Tetris. Both companies motioned for preliminary injunctions that would prohibit the other company from selling Tetris”

I’m sure Nintendo was involved in some other lawsuit involving Tetris.

We got used to Nintendo being lax with security.

Although, that being said, Nintendo has been doing console bans since the 3DS. Every 3DS cart has a serial number and the server will ban consoles that happen to both be online with the same cart at the same time. Switch and Switch 2 have the same restriction. It was really only the Wii and DSi that were lax.

I suspect what really changed is that the MiG Switch exists. People just now got access to a cheap, reasonable, and most importantly, difficult to ban flashcart solution. What's going on is that people are dumping their games, selling them on, but still playing their now-illegal backups. Since those games have been dumped and are on the used market they're little time bombs that will explode and kill someone's console.

Even in the 3DS era, though, much of the piracy scene was focused on CFW and homebrew piracy apps. The thing about CFW developers is that they actually have the fear of God (or at least the feds) in their heart, so they ONLY provide enough instruction to get homebrew working. And the people providing piracy tools on top of that are part of the piracy scene, they know what gets banned, so they're all going to tell you a hundred times to NEVER. USE. PUBLIC. HEADERS. ONLINE.

But the MiG Switch people? They don't care. They just want to sell you a flashcart. Hell, Gateway (the 3DS equivalent) was run by people who shipped literal console-bricking malware to try and "protect" their flashcard against clones (ironically). The only reason this didn't become an issue on 3DS is that Gateway's precious exploit got patched and they couldn't steal exploits and tools from the CFW scene fast enough to keep the card working.

You did see the part where I said "Unless the owners name is Mario" and I've been to Costa Rica.

I live in the US and I've never even met a Mario, even amongst Italians I've studied or worked with.

In a similar vein, Uzi Nissan won a protracted legal battle against Nissan (the car company) over nissan.com, because he'd been in business fixing import cars way before Nissan decided to drop the Datsun name.

Still wound up getting his life ruined from the legal fees, though

The point is that it’s not personal. They’re just doing what they’re obligated to do.

> So, if you're wondering what he means by "English Common Law", let me answer your confusion with another question: why doesn't Japan have Fair Use?

“Fair Use” isn’t “English Common Law”, it is an American doctrine; most other common law jurisdictions - including England (and the rest of the UK), Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa - have the narrower fair dealing doctrine instead.

According to Wikipedia [0] the main countries other than the US with fair use are Malaysia, Poland and South Korea. Singapore has recently adopted a hybrid model combining elements of both fair use and fair dealing.

> Well, the answer's simple: they can't, because judges aren't allowed to legislate from the bench over there. In civil law countries, the law is the law, full stop; judges can't add onto it in any meaningful way.

This is nonsensical. Most common law countries don’t have fair use, they have the narrower fair dealing doctrine instead; but some civil law jurisdictions do have fair use, such as Poland and South Korea. Common vs civil law has no real bearing on fair use vs fair dealing vs neither - it is a policy choice legislators make when enacting statutory copyright law.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing#/media/File%3AFai...

I was wrong that they're private (genuine misunderstanding lol), but by market cap they're competing with sony, microsoft, and tencent, who are all relatively-larger. Even Roblox is in the same neighborhood at 75B -- it's not like it's a juggernaut, it's legally vulnerable.