Ralph Koster outlines the tangled web of patents covering the popular world of music-based video games.  A patent thicket describes when several patents cover a single product, owned by several different groups.  Music based video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band are finding themselves mixed up in a web of lawsuits.  First Konami is suing Harmonix for patents on music games, even though Harmonix has its own assortment of music game patents (including a patent on a “game controller simulating a musical instrument”).  Konami previous made GuitarFreaks and is looking to get back into the music game genre since Harmonix help make it such a success (more than Konami ever did).

Let’s not forget Red Octane and Activision, the team still responsible for Guitar Hero (which Harmonix headlined before getting bought by MTV). They’ve been licensing patents from Konami while getting sued by Gibson who also has patents on music games even though they sold likeness rights to the game for toy Gibson guitars. And let’s not forget Harmonix had sued Activision over unpaid royalties (now bargaining instead).

All the lawsuits shows none of this is about innovation, but is about greed and strong arming bargaining positions for more licensing fees.  That’s not what the patent system is supposed to be for.  The more these companies fight over music game patents, the worse consumers will be as the games will be more expensive, if they can even afford to be made.

BoingBoing reports a secret code in Google Reader. The famous Konami Code used in dozens of Konami (and non-Konami games) since the NES days has made its way into Google Reader. Press Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A will reset your unread items to 30 (like Contra’s 30-extra lives) and decorate your sidebar with a ninja. Reloading the page puts everything back to normal. Researchers are still analyzing the code’s usefulness.

Contra is arguably the hardest video game ever.  It takes amazing thumb skills mixed with insane memorization to map all the levels and avoid the swarm of tiny dots that can kill you.  The Konami code actually first appeared in Gradius but Contra made it famous.  Kazuhisa Hashimoto created the code for Gradius when he found the game was too challenging to play in one sit through.  He ended up leaving the code in the final release of the game.  In Contra, the code gave you 30 lives, making the game less insulting to the average player (and some advanced gamers still needed to rely on it).  Konami ended up including the same code in dozens of games.