Ok, so way back in November 2000, during the days of the Colour Gameboy, I was playing around with Pokemon and came up with an idea – an invention if you will…. The idea was to release a game on a modified GB cartridge, which could then be “updated†via the use of sim cards, similar to those found in mobile phones (no flash media back then). The sim cards would contain additional character data / weapons / levels etc etc, which could be issued as promotional items, given away on the front of magazines or sold very cheaply in local stores. The sim cards could then be clipped into a larger credit-card size card, which could then be traded in a similar way as the Pokemon trading cards were at the time. This would ultimately prolong the life of the original game, create a unique gaming experience (depending on the sims you have collected and used) and add a whole new dimension to the trading card scene….. I had lots more marketing ideas / example of how it could be used, but you get the general idea… So I contacted an invention firm based in Ireland (and submitted all of the above info and lots more) who thought my idea had potential, but wanted £500 to progress with patent searches etc. At the time I was skint, so I declined the offer and forgot about the whole idea - although I did send a copy of the documentation to myself via Special Delivery so I had a dated sealed copy for my records. Thing is a year later, after the AGB was released along came the E-Card Reader, which whilst it operated slightly differently, followed the same concept as my idea. Lots of other examples have also been seen since. So my question to the forum is thus; a) Should I have progressed with the patent search to see what might have come about? b) Do you think that the invention firm I used might have passed on my idea to others, perhaps inspiring the creation of the E-Card Reader? Scan of my concept below (please excuse the poor artwork and crappy text) I’m not posting this for any other reason but to hear your thoughts on the whole situation, and to see if anyone else has had a similar thing happen to them….(perhaps a gaming invention sticky?) Thanks for reading :thumbsup:
that's a legal area I d advise against publicly posting. On your design , the cost of including a sim-card reader on individual cartridges would make it unntractive. SIM cards cannot store much information to start with, and more things fit in battery backed SRAM than a SIM card,updating can be done on the GBC's infrared port etc. Nice to see you took up the time to file it though.
Sellow man I recommend Zero Punctuation, a series of reviews with well, no punctuation. Funny as hell.
Spam??? They already made something like this with e-cards, where by sliding it across the reader it would upload info from that card.
It's say that that looks like a prototype idea that was replaced by the ability of the DS to download and store (until turned off) free demos. If you search the patents, there's ton of kooky nintendo patents.
Remember SongBoy? A MP3 player for the GameBoy Color. A prototype of it was made, I believe. Nintendo sued them for breach of license (which means they had dev hardware, to test their hardware) as it was simply piggy-backing on the gameboy just for a powersource to play music from it's hardware and not use any of the gameboy's hardware..
Theres no way in hell that the archaic 8080 of the GBC could be used for MP3 playback. Is obvious they were trying to steal some of the GBC's thunder, which is funny cuz at the time there were very few MP3 players, and therefore it wasnt that difficult for a new company to standout from the rest.
