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

As a devout Marxist would say....

[ValhallaOne]

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

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.

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]

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.)