7 Legal Decisions That Changed Gaming History

6. Why More Titles Don't Have Games As Loading Screens

Anyone who played Ridge Racer will remember being able to have a few bouts of Galaxian whilst the game was loading. It felt like a revelation at the time, but quadruply so now, because only a fraction of games in history have ever done the same.

Interestingly, the reason why we can't play Snake, Tetris or anything else on a loading screen is actually down to a patent filed by Namco back in 1995.

This alleged that the very idea of having anything playable while a game was loading was copyrightable by Namco, so even if you owned the lower-res game in question, companies still had to cough up the cash to include it before the main event, so to speak.

Thankfully, this patent expired in 2015, opening up a host of future titles to finally give us something to do when they're booting in.