A rhythm game in which your character dances in the view of other players.
How it works
You need to press the indicated keys in the correct time to obtain the “perfect” status. The “perfect” status in sequence generates combos that increase your score. Your match ends when the music ends and you receive a score. Unlike Planetary Piano, you will not be penalized if you miss the sequence.
Yeah, I’d like to know where he heard that as well. Tap Tap Revolution is completely free, so, if the dev had to pay royalties, I dont see how he could keep it free.
EDIT: A super quick google search found nothing about royalties.
I think this one would be applicable, especially considering how obnoxiously broad patent claims can be. it’s annoying to look through all of their patents because by Jove they make a lot of casino machines.
This one looks to be more related to general gameplay rather than the logic of it, but it did expire in 2019 so I don’t think that’s too relevant to this anymore, but would have been when Mac said that back in 2017.
So like, you can ask to use the patent, but Konami probably wants money in return for licensing it out. If you don’t as far as I know that sorta goes against what’s stated in 35 U.S.C. § 261, wherein it says they’re like personal property–and you sorta just can’t roll up and start using someone else’s property without permission, and even more so when you’re profiting off of it to some extent. Well I guess you kinda can, but then you kinda get in trouble when it comes to 35 U.S. Code § 271. § 271(d) also mentions a bit about licensing. Also i’m silly little crusader guy not a lawyer.
As far as I can tell, this only applies to “game machines”. So basically you have an input (dance pad), that gets converted by the “game machine” and displayed on a monitor. Since the suggestion is talking about purely software with no physical machine I don’t think the patent applies.
You could argue that a computer works the same way, but the patent specifically states “game machine”, not computer. I take “game machine” to mean a machine that only has one purpose; to run the game. It’s an external, physical object that translates ‘step’ movement to actions in the game, and is not the same as using fingers to press buttons on a keyboard.
It also clearly states that it uses arrows, so a workaround could just be using circles that display a key and a color, instead of arrows that display a direction to press.
But I really think just adding it in and having it be exclusively software based is enough. ITG (In The Groove) got shut down because they sold a separate game ‘dance mat’ that basically functioned exactly like a DDR machine and translated ‘step’ movement to in-game inputs.
