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Nintendo Patents Insanity

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the please-tell-me-this-is-a-joke dept.

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."

9 of 553 comments (clear)

  1. So Who's gonna be the first to patent... by Marc+Desrochers · · Score: 2, Insightful

    STUPIDITY!

  2. Eternal Darkness, anyone? by Salamande · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'm sure I won't be the last one to mention this...it's on their own hardware, no less. I'm disappointed. I'd have thought Nintendo would be above stuff like this.

    1. Re:Eternal Darkness, anyone? by Rallion · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Um, You're aware that for all intents and purposes, ED might as well actually be a N-branded game, right?

    2. Re:Eternal Darkness, anyone? by NattyBucho · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What do you mean? Nintendo published Eternal Darkness, and they essentially own the applicable rights to it. This patent was created for the game, so... what's so disappointing about this?

  3. Re:Eternal Darkness? by edwdig · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The patent was filed December 14, 2000. Eternal Darkness was released in 2002. Patents just take a long time to be processed.

  4. Re:Eternal Darkness? by Uhlek · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The patent was filed December 14, 2000.

    And you're right, this matches identically to the system in Eternal Darkness. The sanity system was one of the big advertising points of the game -- this was probably to protect it.

  5. A Madness to Their Method by Quirk · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The Discovery Channel ran a great little series on the Amazon Rain Forest. In one episode they used time lapse photography to show the slow sure growth of an Epiphyte that chose as its host one of the largest giant trees of the Rain Forest. The Epiphyte, starting from a sprout grew to completely obscure the giant tree. The tree blocked from sunlight died in the embrace of the epiphyte. When the host tree died a swath of the forest ecosystem died with it. The spooky part was that by the time the tree began to die you couldn't see it, the epiphyte completely engulfed the tree.

    As a Canadian, watching the suffocating growth in Intellectual Property rights in America, I get a recurring image of the epiphyte choking the life of that giant tree. One day what nurished American industry will disappear choked off by patents, maybe we won't even see it die.

    --
    "Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
    Cohen
  6. Re:Call of Cthulhu ? by LurkerXXX · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Only a couple/few decades prior.

  7. Re:Call of Cthulhu ? by mog007 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What about the Postal 2 expansion? That's certainly got prior art all over this.

    --
    Learn something new.