Tag: law

Nintendo Files 31 Patents for Tears of the Kingdom Features

Revealed by Amber V at Automaton, Nintendo has gone on a spree of filing patents on features of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Some of the software they’re trying to add the force of law to protecting include adding momentum of an object to a character standing atop it, figuring out what object the character is standing on, and showing a map of a place the player is fast traveling to during its loading sequence. What is it with companies patenting things that can be done during loading? Namco for a long time had a patent on minigames that could be played during loading periods, which is why for a long while (perhaps to this day) you have had to sit and wait for a game to complete loading before doing anything, instead of at least having fun during that time.

If Nintendo has its way, other companies won’t be allow to present screens like this unless they license the “technology” from them.

My stance, long-held and admittedly strident, is that patents should not be applied to software, ever, full stop. I am sure that some people might disagree with that opinion. They are welcome to, but I am unlikely to change their mind without a damn good argument.

Nintendo registers numerous new patents from Tears of the Kingdom, even for loading screens (automation-media.com)

Ars Technica: The Actor Who Claims to Have Co-Created Mortal Kombat

Image from the article at Ars Technica. The classic ninja of Mortal Kombat were played by Dan Pesina.

Blogfriend David Craddock has an article up at Ars Technica about the drama that went down back in the days when Mortal Kombat was a big hit of the arcade scene, and people schemed to make careers off of it. Even though it took in a lot of quarters pretty quickly and spawned several arcade sequels, it wasn’t the institution it was today. When it hit it big, the actors whose digital likenesses appeared in the game sued for royalties not received due to the sale of home versions of Mortal Kombat on the SNES and Genesis.

It’s an excellent article. David really did his research on this one! The end result is, most of the actors settled, but one, Dan Pesina, still claims to this day to have “co-created” the game, which seems ludicrous. It seems to me weird to keep at that in this era, with Midway long gone and the rights having moved to Warner Bros., but then, I have no stake in the matter? Ah well.

Ars Technica: The actor who claims he co-created Mortal Kombat. Also consider David’s book on the history of Mortal Kombat, available now on Amazon!