[bitcointicker]

Never knew invade-a-load was mainly a feature of UK games..

It mostly appeared in games sold in the United Kingdom, as, by the time it was written, the Commodore market in the United States had mostly switched to floppy disk media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invade-a-Load

Loading games on the C64 was a nightmare.... At least with the 3 cassette loaders I owned. The first 1 broke, the second one was returned due to not loading some games and with the 3rd I experimented with adjusting the tape head alignment. Most games would load, but sometimes they would randomly fail. When loading took a up 30 mins (max capacity, most games much less), it would become infuriating! Much finger crossing was done during loading.

This was the tape loader...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64_peripherals#Tape_...

[greggman]

Ugh! There are sooooooooo many patents and copyrights that don't deserve protection but because of the broken systems in place no one is willing to challenge them.

No game company I know of was wiling to challenge Namco's patent. It's not worth the money even if you win. Just remove the feature :(

Other game related patents include

zooming a camera from Virtua Racing, patented.

Ghost cars from Midway's Hard Drivin', patented.

Patent to have a arrow point the way to go from Crazy Taxi

Patent on plus shaped controllers. That to me sounds about as crazy as a patent on round knobs but IANAL

Patent on making a wireless controller go to sleep after a certain amount of time.

[pbhjpbhj]

I don't know if it's the case here but one needs to be sure to read the granted claims to determine the scope.

Abstracts are notoriously broad definitions that people often read and get confused by as they think this applicant written section defines the patent, it does not (file wrapper estoppels aside).

[Joof]

Why the fuck are we patenting things that are effectively art (games) or design ideas?

[oneeyedpigeon]

It was incredibly exciting when games started coming out on cartridge for instant-loading, although IIRC there weren't too many games available in that format.

[radiorental]

You've brought back a lot of memories. My Atari 800 was the same. The more we played the games, the more worn they'd get, the less likely they'd load. Favourite games wore out first )o;