Charles

It might be that, if Nintendo can show that they came up with the mechanic before anyone else, it still applies (under Japanese patent law). It's absolutely still scummy, and they are kind of setting themselves up for someone else to come along and say "actually we came up with [some mechanics for riding a 'mount'] in our game first" and patent it in Japan and sue Nintendo. I bet that some property now owned by Microsoft has "original" mechanics for that and I would absolutely not put it past MS to do exactly as I mentioned, if for no other reason than to make sure Nintendo doesn't do it to them first.

World of Warcraft, for instance, certainly had the ability to use mounts before I think it showed up in Pokemon.

I also hope Palworld points out that targeting mechanics have been around forever and simply applying it to capturing a creature should never have been given a patent.

What do you think every magic set ever made was for? It's a CCG! The only reason it exists (from WotC's or Hasbro's standpoint) is to sell cards and make money! I mean, I guess you are understandably disappointed that Hasbro, makers of a version of Monopoly for every major city or popular show or movie, and the overseers of both the Jurassic Park and Fallout MTG sets, produced a "gimmick" but to be fair, WotC made Ice Age WELL before Hasbro had any say, and if replacing every basic land with a "snow covered" version isn't a gimmick then I don't know what is. Of course they also produced Unglued not that long after, but that was *just* a gimmick, so you could still decide to ignore it and "just play seriously". Still, it's hardly fair to be upset about the precedent set by those releases around three decades later.

I don't know, maybe MTG isn't for you. I recognize that this bluster is because it's suddenly a lot harder to gatekeep the game down to the kind of people who usually spend more time in game stores (but not working there) than in other life endeavors, but if selling cards to make money and gimmicks are things you dislike, I think you should seriously consider why it took this long for you to notice or be offended by those things, and whether you can live with what MTG has always been and let new people get into it without begrudging them a few cute furry animals, or whether it's time to move on to... Well, who knows. Probably not something related to gaming, since companies making games are all doing it to sell games and earn money.