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Nintendo Patents Horseback Riding Controller

Skull_Kid

Bugaboo!
Joined
Sep 15, 2008
Location
Portugal
Theoretically, it's a good idea, but it looks way too ******** for my liking... seriously...
And yes, there's already the balance board, so, no need for this mambo-jambo.
Also, I usually play layed on the bed, this would be awful for me...
 

Immortal_One

Math is power.
Joined
May 28, 2009
Location
Indiana, USA
It seems a bit excessive to simulate absolutely everything in a game. I don't think I would buy this add on, or even borrow it from someone if the next Zelda game required it. It seems like a totally pointless add on, really.

I don't think Nintendo would go as far as to make this accessory a necessary part of their core games, because I feel like they're smart enough to know that very few of their dedicated fans would stoop as low as that sort of an add on. But hey, Nintendo has always been about interactivity, even when it when it was way before it's time. Look at the NES, it had the Power Glove, The NES Zapper, R.O.B and plenty other accessories that few people liked. Something about it tells me that it's a fake, but I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to release something like that.
 
R

RanMan

Guest
That looks ****ing gay...
who in there right mind would think that this is going be fun?
 

basement24

There's a Bazooka in TP!
Joined
Feb 28, 2009
Location
Ontario, Canada
Then again its proably not real. IGN comes up with alot of things like this.

The only problem is IGN picked up this story from another website. They were not the first to post about it. Also, the IGN Nintendo team has stated a number of times that they will not report rumours without solid facts to back them up.

I know what you mean though, anything on the net should be taken with a grain of salt. Anyone can really come on and create a page claiming anything they want, and if it seems reasonably true enough it will spread and enough people will believe it. But unfortuantely, this appears to be a legitimate patent submission.

As it is, they have applied for and recieved a patent for a height-adjustable leg. You can actually find it on the US Patent Office website. No images, but they do own rights to a certain design for it now...
 

bellum

Gamer since age 2
Joined
Jan 18, 2009
Location
in my house
Oh no. I hope this isn't true. I mean, my sister could possibly like this but I would never like to be sitting on a piece of plastic pretending to be riding a horse. But, I don't have a Wii anyways. I do agree with lots that this is a big waste of plastic,
 

basement24

There's a Bazooka in TP!
Joined
Feb 28, 2009
Location
Ontario, Canada
You can see the actual patent file here on the European Patent Office website.

http://v3.espacenet.com/publication...=A1&FT=D&date=20090722&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP

There's a whole 28 page documentation that they submitted, drawings of it, detailed descriptions of the drawings and more. Here's a short quote of the description:

"An inflatable air cushion or other type seat a person can sit on is instrumented with electronic input devices that can sense motion of the cushion and/or motion of the person's body. Such input devices provide inputs to a computer graphics system that dynamically generates a responsive scene on a real time display. The sensed motion can be used to generate a graphics simulation of horseback riding."


Sorry, but it's 100% legitimate, folks. :S
 

Dark_Kokiri

I be a Kokiri~
Joined
Feb 24, 2009
Location
In a city along the Great Bay coast
Ooooh boy..... ya know what I see with this? Squeals to the "Petz Horsez" game. Really, I wont be able to stand any more of those....my sister likes playing them on the DS and that's bad enough, I can't imagine the horror of them booting it to the Wii as well.

Well, since Nintendo has already announced it, no doubt that they are going to sell it. I've never bought extensions to whatever the heck they've been doing, unless it came with the game I bought. Oh wait...we bought the balance board for Wii Fit. Well, that game was crap anyways. Another bad investment by my sister, cost us about $80 for a game that only lasted us about a week. I can see this thing being a similiar situation, people will go out and buy this (hopefully not excited, that would be just morbid) and waste all their money on a piece of crap that will never get used again.

Honestly, I'm getting sick of Nintendo encouraging people to buy this stuff. Yes, I am well aware that it makes them lots of money off of suckers willing to buy this crap, but I just feel like videogames have lost their identity, so to say. With all this stuff to try and get the casual gamer to come in, it's flooding us hardcore gamers out. It's really putting a different identity on what videogames are, and I prefer the title "geeky" than "normal suff that everyone does now". And since I'm a girl, being a core gamer makes me all the more different, and I like that, but all this stuff is... taking that title away. Yes, an odd way to think, but that's how I see it. Videogames are eventually not going to have a split between core and casual, it's going to be mixed, and the games will present no challenge to the core crowd. And when that happens, Nintendo is going to loose a LOT of respect and business.

Back to the topic at hand, if it was required for a Zelda game, I wouldn't invest in it with my own money. Though knowing my sister, she would so it wouldn't matter to me. I sure hope that this is just an extra mod, because if it isn't, the next Zelda game aint gonna be a best seller like it was when Twilight Princess came out. (That game hit the Geniuses World Record book for most sold in a year, actually.)
 
Joined
Dec 14, 2008
Location
Louisiana, USA
Sorry, but it's 100% legitimate, folks. :S

I'm not panicking though. From what I've heard, junk patents like these are made all the time, and the actual product never gets created and sold. I would bet Nintendo had tons of junk patents with even worse ideas, but that doesn't mean all of them are going to be on store shelves. It was just coincidental that we heard about that this one. I'm sure this kind of thing has been going on for years and we've just never heard of it until now.
 

Immortal_One

Math is power.
Joined
May 28, 2009
Location
Indiana, USA
I'm not panicking though. From what I've heard, junk patents like these are made all the time, and the actual product never gets created and sold. I would bet Nintendo had tons of junk patents with even worse ideas, but that doesn't mean all of them are going to be on store shelves. It was just coincidental that we heard about that this one. I'm sure this kind of thing has been going on for years and we've just never heard of it until now.

The only thing that leads me to believe that the product will actually be made is that fact that Nintendo is notorious for releasing add-ons to their systems and become huge flops. The NES was filled with useless add-ons that did absolutely terrible in the market, and I don't think they've learned from their past mistakes

Although, it might take the route of a lot of their previous add-ons by coming out in Japan and doing so terrible there that they scrap the rest of the project. If it could happen to one of the items that maybe would have kept a lot of games Nintendo exlusives, it could happen to this abomination.
 

basement24

There's a Bazooka in TP!
Joined
Feb 28, 2009
Location
Ontario, Canada
I'm not panicking though.

I'm not panicking either... yet. I think my main problem right now is that I can see them following this through to the end. It's true, a lot of aptents get filed mainly to state claim to an idea before someone else does, but no one goes through with it.

It's just with the amount of gadgets and gizmos released for the Wii, I wouldn't be surprised to see Miyamoto sitting on one of these at next year's E3. If you'd shown this to me when N64 or GC were at their peak, I wouldn't believe it would hit retail for a second. Wii's level of oddball gameplay styles lends itself to something like this, which makes it believable, albeit odd.

The NES was filled with useless add-ons that did absolutely terrible in the market, and I don't think they've learned from their past mistakes.

It's oddly true that Nintendo has indeed been down this path before, and it was not a good one back then. The old NES peripherals were made for 2 or 3 games at best and didn't always function properly. I forgot how many there were... the Power Glove, the Power Pad, ROB, the Zapper... I remember seeing ROBs for sale at Canadian Tire for years after the NES was nowhere in sight. With perihperals like WiiSpeak and the Balance Board not being supported by many games at all, I wonder if they will be found heavily discounted in the future.

If this horse device does get made, then really, what could it function for? Zelda's a natural, and perhaps a Yoshi game. Maybe a 3rd party horse racing title, or a Petz Horses package? Say this was a brilliant idea that everyone loved, and it makes it out to huge fanfare like the Balance Board. There's still only a handful of titles that could support it in the end, and another $100 perihperal is something I wouldn't want for one title, even if it were Zelda.
 

Shadsie

Sage of Tales
If we see Mr. Miyamoto at a con sitting on one of those things, I hope people point and laugh. :lol:

In keeping with my earlier comments on horses...

If they really wanted to make something to simulate horseback riding, they ought to make something more akin to a mechanical bull.
 

Immortal_One

Math is power.
Joined
May 28, 2009
Location
Indiana, USA
If we see Mr. Miyamoto at a con sitting on one of those things, I hope people point and laugh. :lol:

In keeping with my earlier comments on horses...

If they really wanted to make something to simulate horseback riding, they ought to make something more akin to a mechanical bull.
What I'm afraid of is that they get too in tuned with making these casual games such as Petz: Horses and what not that they stop being mindful of dedicated Nintendo fans who were there from the start. They seem to be progressing to that direction, and I really hope I don't see the day that Nintendo decides to cater exclusively to the casual gamer.
 

Clucluclu

Time for waffles
Joined
Jul 9, 2009
Location
Los Angeles
If this is required, I absolutely will not buy the game, especially because the game would probably end up being the same conccept as Link's Crossbow Training except horseback riding. I can't imagine what else it could be mandatory for.
 
Joined
Jan 25, 2010
First of all, I wish they don't realese at all !!!
I don't think they will even use it in the game! If they made it mandatory, it would be very stupid. And if it were opitional, I wouldn't buy it.
In my opinion, it is just a waste of material and money.
 
Joined
Jan 24, 2010
If anything, it'll probably just be another large chunk of plastic, that goes over the Wii Fit board. I hope they don't release it. Though just because they patent something. Doesn't mean they are going to produce it. Or is that like a law?
 

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