In May 2013, YouTuber JolteonPlays uploaded a video showcasing the rough prototype for an unofficial "3D indie Pokemon" game called Pokemon: Generations. To this day, it occasionally comes up among Pokemon fans dreaming about what new games in the series might look like. Today, recent comments on that 13-year-old video have been flooded with praise for a different reason: the existence of Pokemon: Generations has been used to dismiss potentially limiting patents filed by Nintendo amidst its Palworld lawsuit.
As Automaton reports, the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) recently upheld its rejection of a Nintendo patent targeting an "in-game monster-capturing system" – the sort of system that the company's used to argue infringement by Palworld during an extended legal process that has seen developer Pocketpair quietly adjust a few of its own features and designs to be less Pokemon-like.
