The US Patent Office is, sometimes, more than a little kooky.
Back in 1995, Namco threw in a playable, miniature version of the arcade classic Galaxian to keep players amused during the lengthy loading times for PlayStation launch title Ridge Racer. In the decades since, other developers have largely been prevented from copying the idea of minigames on loading screens. That's because of a broad US patent Namco got for games that prevent "unnecessary wastage of time… by first loading the smaller, auxiliary game program code into the games machine, before the main-game program code is loaded, then loading the main-game program code while the auxiliary game is running."
That patent is now ending (since the patents still have sane terms, unlike copyrights), so now … well, maybe we'll be able to play games within games while waiting for our main games to load … again.
Loading-screen boredom may be behind us thanks to expiring patent | Ars Technica
Namco had a legal monopoly on interstitial mini-games for the past 20 years.
Or you know, solid state drive + Oct core 4.0ghz processor, no need for loading screens
+Jacob Bridenbecker yeah, I recently bothered to try out Skyrim. I can barely read the first line of load screens. *sniff*
+Jacob Bridenbecker kinda slow….
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+'Jə – 'ə' Same #firstworldproblems