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Midway Sues Ericsson Over Defender 'Tribute'
An anonymous reader writes "Redkeyreddoor is relaying a story, via the Wall Street Journal, that Midway has sued Ericsson for distributing a completely unlicensed version of Defender on its T68 cellphone. The mobile game in question seems to be 'Game', which does bear a remarkable similarity to Defender (there's a screenshot at this Japanese cellphone review page). Ericsson has apparently removed 'Game' (and a version of Tetris, ingeniously called 'Tetris') from later versions of the T68."
Defender was hard enough with a joystick and five buttons spread out over a wide two-hand console. I can't imagine playing it on my cell phone with a keyboard the size of a mini-post-it note (and my big fat tree-trunk thumbs) would be even remotely entertaining.
If they were gonna steal a game, they shoulda done some research first. Something like Galaxian or Galaga would have been a better fit.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
"You have a shitty Defender clone on your phones. OMFGWTFLOL GIVE ME ALL YOUR PHONES!!!111!onehundredandeleven!"
Why sue for an apology or some licensing ducats, when you can sue for the whole frigging world and settle for and apology and some licensing ducats.
blarg.
Gamespy's dumbest moments in gaming
Although since the game was removed I guess it might have been the smart thing to do from Midway's perspective.
But using the actual "Tetris" trademark was just plain stupid.
Defender was released 24 years ago. Is this a copyright case? I doubt they actually took any actual code from Defender.
Even if they did, copyright's whole purpose is to promote growth of the public domain - is anybody arguing that Williams Electronics, the creator of Defender, would not have created it if they weren't guaranteed an artificial monopoly for over two decades? Why are copyrights on computer software so ridiculously long anyway?
'Game' and Tetris have been on Ericsson phones for a while, they were first released on the T29. I was chuffed, defender is one of my favourite classic arcade games..
One of my proudest video game moments was rolling the score on Defender (rolled at 1,000,000 as I recall). Many a roll of quarters went into practising this game while skipping out of high-school. It was a hard game to master but definately one of the most adrenaline charged ever.
because I don't have those games on my T68.
;)
That's rather surprising to me because I bought the phone off of eBay and it's pretty beat up outside; paint coming off, scratches, etc.
Still works quite well tho... Just looks fugly. Hopefully ugly enough that nobody will steal it.
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This is just a tribute!
You gotta believe me!
And I wish you were there!
Just a matter of opinion.
How eloquent.
You managed to use the "f-word" as a noun, adjective and verb.
If you bothered to type your response, one would think you could come up with better words and phrasing to express your thoughts clearly.
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
At least he didn't use any 3s or 7s when he wrote it.
Whoever modded this as offtopic has never played the 3D remake of DEFENDER for Game Cube.
I've had two different Ericsson phones, and there was a Tetris game on both of them, and yes it was also called 'Tetris'. There was also a game similar to, but not quite like, Qix. It was much slower, but still fun if you were bored waiting for someone, sitting in your car, and all you have is your cellphone.