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Patents Businesses Nintendo Entertainment Games

Nintendo Patents Insanity 553

Posted by CmdrTaco 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."
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Nintendo Patents Insanity More

Nintendo Patents Insanity

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  • Call of Cthulhu ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by morcego ( 260031 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:07PM (#13437390)
    I wonder of the writers/copyright holders of Call of Cthulhu would say to that.

    • Re:Call of Cthulhu ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by EasyTarget ( 43516 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:09PM (#13437409) Journal
      I wonder of the writers/copyright holders of Call of Cthulhu would say to that.

      "Prior Art"

      I hope.

      • Re:Call of Cthulhu ? (Score:5, Informative)

        by lilmouse ( 310335 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:17PM (#13437523)
        Actually, "Prior Art" would only work if they already had a video game with weird effects. However, that bit about a nontrivial innovation would apply. If you play CoC, and make a video game out of it, then the idea of measuring sanity doesn't take a whole lot to come up with. "Gee, there's already this thing called 'sanity' in CoC...I'd better put that in the video game too!" In that sense, you could fight the patent.

        --LWM
        • Tetanus on Drugs [pineight.com], anyone?

          "Tetanus On Drugs simulates playing a Tetris® clone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs."

          The author lurks on /. somewhere... I can't seem to recall his nick just at the moment, though...

      • Re:Call of Cthulhu ? (Score:4, Informative)

        by RailGunner ( 554645 ) * on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:19PM (#13437551) Journal
        So would ASC Games, makers of Sanitarium. [google.com]

        Sierra On-Line has prior art, as well: Phantasmagoria II had a main character who hallucinated and saw the walls bleed as he descended into madness.

        Further proof software patents are stupid.

        • Re:Call of Cthulhu ? (Score:3, Informative)

          by wo1verin3 ( 473094 )
          What about the dream scenes in Max Payne? The player relived the murder of his wife and child with erie music and moving walls/floors....

          • Re:Call of Cthulhu ? (Score:3, Informative)

            by fbjon ( 692006 )
            Not to mention the hallucinations in the original Team Fortress for Quake1. When hit by a stun grenade, the world would start going seasick, you'd see explosions from nowhere, and hear gunfire like it's total warfare all around you.

      • Or nethack :) (Score:5, Funny)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:26PM (#13437622) Homepage
        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:Call of Cthulhu ? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mog007 ( 677810 )
        What about the Postal 2 expansion? That's certainly got prior art all over this.

    • Easy: (Score:5, Funny)

      by abb3w ( 696381 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:52PM (#13437882) Journal
      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.)

    • From the FAQ on the Call of Cthulhu game [callofcthulhu.com] website:

      Q. What is the 'Sanity' system?
      A. The 'Sanity' system is a representation of Jack's sanity in the game. This can be unbalanced by what Jack sees, hears and reads as he explores Innsmouth, and can be restored through finding areas of sanctuary or destroying evil creatures. A loss of sanity can be represented in many ways -- such as hearing mysterious voices, hallucinating or suffering visual impairments (double vision and inability to focus).

  • Prior Art? (Score:5, Funny)

    by lilmouse ( 310335 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:07PM (#13437391)
    Anyone played Doom while on LSD?

    --LWM

  • Eternal Darkness? (Score:4, Informative)

    by leafsfanatic ( 621492 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:07PM (#13437397)
    Didn't they do this already with Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube? Way to patent something years after you put out the product!

    • Re:Eternal Darkness? (Score:5, Funny)

      by waynelorentz ( 662271 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:09PM (#13437424) Homepage
      Who knew Nintendo and Apple had so much in common?

    • Re:Eternal Darkness? (Score:5, Informative)

      by RPI Geek ( 640282 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:11PM (#13437451) Journal
      From TFA:

      Filed: December 14, 2000

    • Re:Eternal Darkness? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by edwdig ( 47888 )
      The patent was filed December 14, 2000. Eternal Darkness was released in 2002. Patents just take a long time to be processed.

    • Re:Eternal Darkness? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Uhlek ( 71945 )
      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.
    • Patents take a long time to be granted. This patent could be based on Eternal Darkness, and only now granted.
    • Eternal Darkness was developed by Silicon Knights for Nintendo as a second party. So Nintendo owns all the rights to that game.

    • Re:Eternal Darkness? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Iriel ( 810009 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:23PM (#13437586) Homepage
      However, the specifications of the patent can be easily cirumvented by altering a small number of details.

      Many people on Slashdot keep forgetting (or never learned) that Nintendo patenting a sanity system in a video game doesn't mean that any sanity system is covered under this. For the patent to be granted, it has to contain enough specifications to make it unique. You cannot patent an idea. The Nintendo patent on the sanity system is simply one implementation of it. If someone wanted to to yank the old delerium system from the White Wolf tabletop systems (with their permission, of course), then they wouldn't have to worry about the patent in the least, as long as it wasn't a direct copy of Nintendo's specs on a video game sanity system.

      As long as there has been 'reasonable modification' to the currently patented system registered, another company could create a game with their new 'insanity engine' and even patent that as having significant improvment on an existing patent.

      Nintendo isn't trying to monopolize the horror/action horror video game industry people. They just want to protect their own specific method of inciting character insanity in the video game engine.
      </finallytakingabreath>

      • Re:Eternal Darkness? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by thebdj ( 768618 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:27PM (#13437629) Journal
        The Spec means nothing. The considerably broader claims are what is actually covered by the patent. That spec could read on several embodiments of the same system and in the end only one of those embodiments may be specifically covered by this patent, or the claims could be so broad to cover then all. However, their coverage is not limited to these embodiments, so any other system that reads along the claims could still be infringing the patent. As I have said tons of times, please read patent law and procedure of the United States. There are many things that you (the Slashdot community) really DO NOT KNOW or UNDERSTAND.
        • You're entirely correct. The scope of a patent is determined by its claims. Claim 1 of the nintendo patent is incredibly broad:

          1. A method of operating a video game including a game character controlled by a player, the method comprising:

          (a) setting a sanity level of the game character;

          (b) modifying the sanity level of the game, character during game play according to occurrences in the game, wherein a modifying amount of is determined based on a charater reaction and an amount of character preparation; a
          • Rise Of The Triad. Just eating the mushroom "power-up" in the game nullifies part C of the patent "automatically" since the game actually made you move in non-straight directions while you were tripping your balls off. Plus you couldn't shoot straight.
      • They just want to protect their own specific method of inciting character insanity in the video game engine.

        Protecting themselves, my ass. You know how software patent opponents often trot out the strawman of literary patents? Richard Stallman, for example, pointed out that if literary patents existed, someone might have previously claimed "a communication process that represents, in the mind of a reader, the concept of a character who has been in jail for a long time and becomes bitter towards society and

    • Patents take a while to go through the system (A post below says this one was filed in 2000)

  • first post (Score:4, Funny)

    by mofag ( 709856 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:07PM (#13437398)
    does that mean my boss needs to pay Nintendo?

  • Hmmmm (Score:2, Funny)

    by nvlass ( 705494 )
    Sounds more profitable than to patent Sanity :)

  • Obvious (Score:5, Funny)

    by avgjoe62 ( 558860 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:08PM (#13437401)
    Isn't this patently obvious? How can one patent something so unoriginal? Besides, my in-laws are prime examples of prior art...
    • That's a good idea - I'm going to patent the concept of having kooky inlaws have speaking roles in video games.

      Hey, it's a lot more specific than a "sanity" system.

  • Details (Score:5, Informative)

    by HD Webdev ( 247266 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:08PM (#13437406) Homepage Journal
    Filed: December 14, 2000
    PCT Filed: December 14, 2000
    PCT NO: PCT/US00/33717
    371 Date: September 3, 2002
    102(e) Date: September 3, 2002
    PCT PUB.NO.: WO01/62359
    PCT PUB. Date: August 30, 2001
  • Is a nintendo title, and one of my favorite games of all time. It actually is the last game I finished. It's worth the admission for buying a GC alone IMO.

    • Re:Eternal Darkness (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Askjeffro ( 787652 )
      Agreed. Great game. What's interesting is that it was a joint title between Nintendo and Silicon Knights. Now that Silicon Knights is a 3rd party I wonder how they feel about this?

  • Nethack! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tiredoflurkin ( 899926 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:09PM (#13437418)
    Rogue/ Nethack had this 20 YEARS ago, albeit in ASCII.
  • That's insane.

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

  • Let's just get this out of the way (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:10PM (#13437439)
    1. This patent isn't for a future product. It's years old and it's for the game "Eternal Darkness".
    2. Nintendo is like, never ever in a billion years going to enforce this patent. Ever. If you look at their patent record you'll find they patent damn near everything but don't use the patents for anything. This is just the standard corporate "patent shield" technique, and it works very well; right now Sony and Microsoft have to pay rediculous license fees for the right to make rumble controllers, but Nintendo doesn't, because Nintendo picked up a patent before the company doing all the suing got theirs.
    3. If Nintendo wanted to enforce this patent they'd have very little luck since Eternal Darkness is a complete and total rip off of Call of Cthulu. (This is a good thing. Call of Cthulu is awesome, and so is Eternal Darkness.)

  • Sanity Patent Insane (Score:4, Funny)

    by gkozlyk ( 247448 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:11PM (#13437448) Homepage
    Does this mean the USPTO could be sued by Nintendo in the future for all these ridiculous software patents.

  • Eternal Darkness. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gen. Rasputin X ( 716134 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:12PM (#13437465) Homepage
    The only game I can recall with a decent sanity system was Eternal Darkness for the gamecube. I'm sure there were others, but that was the only one that left an impression on me.

    The Silent Hill games have an insanity system, but it's less related to the characters and more related to the world.

    In theory, the new Cthulhu game has a sanity system, which may count as prior art, and that brings up an interesting idea. Does a system that has been developed but not yet released count as prior art?

    I'm just hopeful that this leads to some new games exploring insanity.
    • I remember in Rise of the Triads you could run into a muschroom (i think?) and all of the sudden you'd be "drunk" and fire missiles all over the place. Was a bitch to play.
    • Does a system that has been developed but not yet released count as prior art?

      No. The whole point of the patent system is to encourage people to publish.

    • Re:Eternal Darkness. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Thuktun ( 221615 )
      Moria [piratehaven.org] and Angband [thangorodrim.net] have had hallucination status flags a decade before Nintendo submitted this patent. It wasn't a variable effect, but when something triggered hallucinations it caused you to see all sorts of things that weren't there and couldn't be acted on.

      Of course, since those are free, open-source games, nobody saw the need to patent features like that.
  • Ok, so I read most of the claims. Uhm, this is like, the same sort of things people have done before with player "health" or "damage", except this is a seperate "sanity" level.

    My question is this: how is this different than patenting a plot device in, say, a book or movie?

  • American McGee's Alice? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by StressGuy ( 472374 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:14PM (#13437493)
    in addition to the other examples already given.

    On a related note, Redneck Rampage got all squirrly when Leonard drank too much. Someone planning to patent in-game drunkeness?

    • iirc, if you drank the wine you could pick up in deus ex, your abilities would be limited (it has been a while, so i dont recall perfectly)

      also, you could smoke the cigarettes and your health would take a 5 point or so hit.
    • Leisure suit larry: magna cum laude - for xbox has a screen effect for drunkenness.

      And as long as we're talking about it, Toe Jam and Earl has one for getting hit by cupid's arrow. It makes it so the direction that you press for forward may not be forward anymore and you have to dynamically adjust.

      But if we keep listing all these things, I don't think it would be fair to patent a type of emotional or mental state. Or even effects that help you feel that way.

      finally, if they do get these kind of pate

  • I'm going to patent a game system where multiple facets of human health and behavior can be affected during game play. For example, if a character is ready for an encounter, he can take a special pill or cast a special spell to give him protection from the encounter. Damage will be much less or non-existant. Depending on whether or not the player is ready, his health, speed, sight, hearing, response time, etc. can all be affected at different levels.

    I'll even make it non-linear for the AIs, based on past

  • As a devout Marxist would say.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ValhallaOne ( 841311 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:15PM (#13437507)
    You can't fool me....there ain't no Sanity Clause...
  • While I cannot think off-hand of a game which has already done this, it seems such a mundane thing to be able to patent - it is just a system which adds points when you rest and subtracts them when you run into a scary creature.

    And depending on that it adjusts the audio effects or adds various graphical effects right? Consider the flashbang effect in Half Life where you have retina-burn or the ringing effect from a nearby explosion, as seen in many games these days. How is this any more innovative except t
  • In the Abstract of the patent, there's two clear errors and two things of which I am not totally sure. Affect and effect seem to have been switched, twice, and there is a random period in the last sentence, not to mention it is redundant. Offending sentences below (emphasis added):

    That is, if a character is prepared for the particular occurrence, the occurrence may have little or no affect on the character's sanity level. As the character's sanity level decreases, game play is effected such as by control
    • I'm not grammer expert, but I think those uses of affect and effect are correct. Then again, I'm usually wrong on these things.

      affect1 Audio pronunciation of "affect" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (-fkt)
      tr.v. affected, affecting, affects

      1. To have an influence on or effect a change in: Inflation affects the buying power of the dollar.
      2. To act on the emotions of; touch or move.
      3. To attack or infect, as a disease: Rheumatic fever can affect th
      • See that "tr.v."? That means "transitive verb". Which means that the phrase "has an affect" is incorrect. The word 'affect' can be used as a noun, but then it has a completely different meaning. The correct way to use 'affect' is in a phrase like ' affected the profit margin'.

  • Makes Sense (Score:4, Funny)

    by burtdub ( 903121 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:19PM (#13437545)
    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.
  • To a Nintendo fanboy, this will somehow be justified. I can't wait to read their posts.

  • Possible prior art: nethack and falconseye (Score:3, Informative)

    by mikael ( 484 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:22PM (#13437580)
    Anyone who has played 'nethack' will know the visual and auditory effects of applying a cursed unicorn horn or drinking a "Potion of Hallucination" anywhere in dungeon, and the possibly fatal effects.

    And anyone who has played 'falconseye', an isometric user interface for 'nethack' will note that these effects are implemented both visually and accoustically.

    To quote 'nethack':
    "You hear an attorney jingling in the distance"
  • Seems to me that insanity is most definitely the Intellectual Property of the SCO Group.

  • Microsoft's already done it. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:24PM (#13437592)
    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.
  • You may laugh, but why not patent human emotions? It's not so far fetched.

    Take the hormone oxytocin [oxytocin.org], for example. What if a synthetic variant is created and patented that provokes a certain emotional response? Would that response also be patented?
  • Sounds a lot like the sanity system of the paper RPG Call of Cthulhu [chaosium.com], which has been around since 1981. A computer version of the similar play rules seems pretty obvious to me. In fact, I don't see many claims not covered in part by Call of Cthulhu.

    Anm
  • I'm not a big fan of software or method patents in the slightest. However, if you have to make a method patent... barring prior art *within the realm of computer and video games*, this patent looks like a fairly reasonable one.

    Call of Cthulhu and even Unearthed Arcana from d20 have implemeneted sanity points with varying effects. However, to my knowledge it had not been implemented in an interactive computer gaming environment prior to Nintendo's work, and it was an innovative solution. Although a method patent is unreasonable by its very nature, Nintendo and its programmers did some innovative work and that deserves legal respect.

    You know, I kind of regret writing that. I'll feel really filthy in the morning.
  • ...you don't need to simulate sanity loss. Instead you try to reduce the player's sanity. I'm sure that some kind of hybrid between Doom 3, Silent Hill and goatse would do the trick.

  • A Madness to Their Method (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:29PM (#13437652) Homepage Journal
    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 [wikipedia.org] 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.

    • You should patent that analogy, it's great!
    • 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.

      That sounds fascinating, can you provide any more info on the show, e.g. title? I had a google for it, but to no avail and I'd really like to see this footage.

  • Why, that's crazy!
  • Wasn't there a scene in Kings Quest (or maybe one of the SQ or PQ games) that the character got drunk and couldn't walk straight?

    Prior art?

    Sorry, didn't RTFA, but I wanted to keep Sierra games within the collective /. consciousness.

  • Realism in games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by siphoncolder ( 533004 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:33PM (#13437691) Homepage
    This may be a bit OT, but I have to admit that the idea itself is actually quite cool. There's so much focus on physics engines and graphics engines, yet developers almost seem to forget that the marine in Doom should really just be peeing himself and freaking out.

    At least in the original Half-Life, they acknowledge Gordon being freaked out by focusing on his breathing and heartbeat in the first early cutscene during the accident. Considering the stressful situations most protagonists in modern games go through, you would think that there would be some effect on their sanity and basis in the "real" world.

    A really neat trick though would be using a sanity engine to actually inspire dread IN THE GAMER, instead of just to the gamer's character onscreen.

    • Re:Realism in games (Score:5, Interesting)

      by g_lightyear ( 695241 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @02:37PM (#13438277) Homepage
      On the patentability: Yes, there's oodles of parallel prior art.

      On the game itself:

      Mustn't be missed. The sanity system is *effective*; it really honestly does warp the player's perspective, make it honestly difficult to know what's real and what isn't, and does actually inspire a creepy sense of dread.

      It makes you go out of your way to not create the situations that end up with you being insane. Loss of sanity happens through a few different ways, but basically it's "do something nuts, and go nuts; get hit by something freakish, and go nuts".

      If a creature gets the jump on you, your sanity drops. If you get the first shot in, you keep your sanity unless it hits you physically - and then your sanity drops. Physical damage gets fixed, but the psychological damage can only be fixed through a different mechanism.

      It's absolutely brilliant, and makes for *riveting* gameplay. Patents like this, which make it harder for people to innovate gameplay, shouldn't be allowed, IMO, if they're overly broad. It's too good an idea to only end up in one game from one company on one system - something like this belongs all over the place.

      It's just brilliant.

  • great... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ate50eggs ( 647594 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:36PM (#13437732) Homepage
    it's hard enough maintaining my sanity without a licencing fee.

  • Sanity Is in the Mind of the Beholder (Score:3, Funny)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:42PM (#13437784) Homepage Journal
    In video games, walls bleed and maniacs laugh. What's "insane" about that?

  • ROTT (Score:5, Informative)

    by LynchMan ( 76200 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:43PM (#13437789)
    Hmm. Wouldn't ROTT (Rise of the Triad) be prior art (circa 1997-1998 maybe?). I remember it having a 'shroomin' mode - where if you ate some mushrooms, it got all trippy for a minute or two...

    But I guess that taking drugs is not covered by this patent:

    character's sanity level that is affected by occurrences in the game such as encountering a game creature or gruesome situation

    Let the pill popping games begin!

  • Claim Analysis 101 (Score:3, Informative)

    by thebdj ( 768618 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @01:49PM (#13437853) Journal
    For effect we are going to analyze the broadest claim the way it should be analyzed. Get out your notebooks cause you'll want to understand this before you complain about another patent.

    1. A method of operating a video game including a game character controlled by a player, the method comprising:

    This "preamble" tells us we are dealing with a mode of operating a video game. It further says that there is a game character and that said game character is player controlled. Straight forward so far, but we have limited ourself to the realms of video games and the user controlled characters there-in.

    (a) setting a sanity level of the game character;

    We are now assigning a sanity level to the game character that was mentioned before. This means that some sort of value for sanity is being set, this is somewhat similar to what would be done for health, mana, or the like; however, it is important to note at the same time that it IS DIFFERENT.

    (b) modifying the sanity level of the game, character during game play according to occurrences in the game, wherein a modifying amount of is determined based on a charater reaction and an amount of character preparation;

    We are now changing the sanity level for the character during game play, this limits the setting to occuring while the game is actually being played. Now there are two things that determine the modification amount: (1) characters reaction and (2) amount of character preparation.
    This is now two more limitations that must be met in any prior art (including possible multiple references for 35 USC 103(a) obviousness).

    (c) controlling game play according to the sanity level of the game character, game play being controlled at least by varying game effects according to the game charater sanity level

    Now the game is affected by the sanity level of the mentioned game character. Now it states that at the very least game effects will be varied according to the game character's sanity level. This means that some degree of changes in some characters of game play will be changed based on this level.

    Now to defend this over mentioned prior art, Nethack people keep mentioning the hallucination potion. This has 0 to do with the patent if that is true. The system used for Nethack could simply have stated, if potion=TRUE then change the effects. This is therefore different then the current patent, unless someone can show otherwise that the system as claimed above is EXACTLY how Nethack was done.

    This similar thing goes for other games. If they used different methods then it would not preclude the patenability of this patent. Remember prior art needs to be before the filing date on this application, also remember that if the system used in other games is unknown, and unpublished the individual companies would have to make aware that they invented such a system to preclude patentability and get the patent nulled.

    Remember what is in the claim is what the patent is for and do not confuse the spec for what the patent is good for. The specification is put there so the public knows the "Best Mode" for the invention. Any questions, please feel free to ask.

  • Yoshi Halucinates... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Doppler00 ( 534739 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2005 @09:45PM (#13441755) Homepage Journal
    And the best example of this: Yoshi's Island. Ah... who can forget the level "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy"

    Hallucinating indeed... [ytmnd.com]

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