Nintendo Patents Insanity

theodp writes "Nintendo scored a patent Tuesday for a Sanity system for video game, which covers causing a game character to hallucinate - e.g., see bleeding walls and hear maniacal laughter - as its sanity decreases in response to encountering a creature or gruesome situation."

Comments

Prior Art?

[lilmouse]

Anyone played Doom while on LSD?

--LWM

Re:Prior Art?

[Asprin]

I had a friend in grad school (physics) who noted from personal experience that Sonic The Hedgehog was "invariant under LSD transformation".

Re:Prior Art?

[ShortSpecialBus]

Have you ever looked at the back of a $20 dollar bill??

On Weed????

first post

[mofag]

does that mean my boss needs to pay Nintendo?

Hmmmm

[nvlass]

Sounds more profitable than to patent Sanity :)

Obvious

[avgjoe62]

Isn't this patently obvious? How can one patent something so unoriginal? Besides, my in-laws are prime examples of prior art...

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[waynelorentz]

Who knew Nintendo and Apple had so much in common?

Sanity Patent Insane

[gkozlyk]

Does this mean the USPTO could be sued by Nintendo in the future for all these ridiculous software patents.

As a devout Marxist would say....

[ValhallaOne]

You can't fool me....there ain't no Sanity Clause...

Makes Sense

[burtdub]

InsanityTM is the only way to describe their business plan over the past ten years, be it the Donkey Congas, the Mario Party series, or the N64 game system.

Re:Patent Sanity?

[MarkGriz]

That's insane.

Seriously, how can this type of patent not get laughed out of the office?

Agreed.

It's patently insane.

Microsoft's already done it.

[Ancient_Hacker]

you can't patent something that's already well known to the trade. Microsoft has been field testing their hallucination generator for some time now-- it's called their "help" pages.

Or nethack :)

[Rei]

Prior Art

Quaff what? [elr or *] r
Wow! Everything seems so cosmic now!
You hear the quarterback calling the play.
You hear Nieman and Marcus arguing.
You hear Doctor Doolittle!
You hear bees in your (nonexistant) bonnet!
The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal bites!
You hit the samurai rabbit.
The Christmas-tree monster bites!
Open what? [fGi or *] f
The Barney the Dinosaur bites!
The Totoro bites!
The rodent of unusual size bites!
The tin contains sauteed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Eat? [yn] y
You consume sauteed cockatrice.
You die...

Do you want your posessions identified? [yn]

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[th3space]

I'd pay to see Link or Mario lose their shit...I really, truly would. NeoGeo prices, at that.

great...

[ate50eggs]

it's hard enough maintaining my sanity without a licencing fee.

Sooo....

[warfudo]

Let me get this straight...does this patent cover the patent system itself? Or only video game representations of patent systems? Because this clearly falls under the category of 'insane'.

Sanity Is in the Mind of the Beholder

[Doc Ruby]

In video games, walls bleed and maniacs laugh. What's "insane" about that?

Easy:

[abb3w]

I wonder of the writers/copyright holders of Call of Cthulhu would say to that.

Cthulhu fhtagn, Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

OK, unleashing the Old Ones to devour your competitors is a little unscrupulous, but at least it's not unleashing lawyers.

(And yeah, there's some prior art in Angband and other roguelikes, but I think it's more binary (off/on) than progressive in effect. There might be some substance to the patent.)

Re:Possible prior art: nethack and falconseye

[saddino]

No. Patent Name
1 6,935,954 Nintendo-Patent [max 1] died in the USPTO. Killed by Prior Art.

Re:A Madness to Their Method

[PseudoThink]

You should patent that analogy, it's great!

Nintendo Slashdot Logic

[einhverfr]

1) Patent Insanity
2) Collect underpants by suing insane people for using your patented invention.
3) ???
4) Profit

Re:Patent Sanity?

[blofeld42]

I don't see how this can hold up in court. Everyone knows there ain't no Sanity Clause.