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by thebrid 1122 days ago
You might be in luck here! In the US, patents last for only 20 years. Since, the Game Boy was released in 1989, any patents are long since expired.

Using the Nintendo logo might (NB: Not a Lawyer!) be permissible if it's required for software to run on the hardware. This was a big part of the Sega v. Accolade case.[1]

There are still new games being released on cartridge for the original Game Boy. The most recent I'm aware of is Ruby & Rusty last year.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade

[2] https://www.bitmapsoft.co.uk/product/ruby-rusty-save-the-cro...

3 comments

There's new games being released on physical carts almost weekly it feels like.

Two publishers I've been keeping a very close eye on are SpaceBot Interactive and Ferrante Crafts.

https://www.spacebot-interactive.com/games

https://www.etsy.com/shop/FerranteCrafts?ref=usf_2020

Also, seems like there's some legal stuff around this I need to research more extensively. But the spirit of what I was trying to say is that it would be awesome to have Nintendo officially bless it... But it's unlikely they ever will.

There’s also this workaround for the logo: https://youtu.be/ix5yZm4fwFQ
Didn’t EA go to court with Sega over exactly this? I believe the court said using a trademark as a device to prevent access to a device was not applicable.