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Retro Gaming Gains A Savior?
1up.com has a look at a new slimline NES console made by a company named Messiah. They hope the console, named Generation NEX, will be able to reach consumers in retail stores. From the article: "We think our products can be mainstream, it's just a matter of finding and reaching those people. Everyone loves the NES, and grew up playing it...We're hoping to get Generation NEX into mainstream retailers. We think that'll help out a lot. It's kind of like one of those impulse buys, people aren't searching for it but when they come across it they'll be like 'whoa, I want that!'...The greatest challenge was incorporating all of the extra features into the hardware...It's quite easy just to make a clone that works with the existing stuff, but then when you incorporate the built-in wireless and all the other stuff that went into this hardware ... That was the biggest challenge, getting everything to work together."
Wouldn't this necessitate that they duplicate the system-side functionality of the 10NES chip in such a way as to violate Nintendo's patent? Seeing as precedent stands in Nintendo's favour regarding the replication of cart-side 10NES functionality, with Tengen having lost its case, if the patent is still valid, one would think that this hardware would not be legal in the United States. But has the 10NES patent expired? Or do carts function without 10NES hardware on the system side, though the reverse is not the case?