Siliconera went patent-spotting recently and guess what they found - two Namco Bandai patents sharing a similar theme: "Skies of Fury" and "Skies of Hostility." When Namco Bandai and skies are on the same subject line, one would probably remember their flight simulator, Ace Combat, which hasn't been making its presence felt in the gaming scene in a while. Another installment, maybe?

Those who think that the Wii Vitality Sensor is a pretty strange peripheral to have for video games probably haven't heard of the horseback riding peripheral. It's basically an inflatable with a pocket to affix the Wiimote in, and the player would have to ride (and yes, bounce on) it to get it to work. Getting the picture yet? Yeah, I laughed too.

I haven't really kept up with the Front Mission series after the third one, but that may soon change as it looks like Square Enix is planning to bring a new Front Mission game to North America.

The Nintendo side of the gaming world is still pretty quiet - at least from where we're standing. This week's recap of the hottest Wii and DS news isn't exactly the hottest, but at least it still keeps you in-the-know with the Nintendo gaming scene.

Way, way back in 2007, Fenner Investments filed a lawsuit against Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo for a patent on tech described as "low-voltage joystick port interface."

The judge is back with a verdict, dismissing the lawsuit against Nintendo. It's about time Nintendo actually won in court over a patent infringement lawsuit.

While everyone's trying to get into the motion-sensing scene to compete with the Wii's popularity, the Wii's going back to a more traditional form of gaming. They upgraded their Classic Controller to the new Classic Controller PRO, which has a distinct PlayStation flavor to it.

Details after the link.

Thanks to Silver-Tiger for the tip!

Remember when Konami sued Harmonix over Rock Band (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii) for alleged patent infringements last year? Well, Harmonix and owner Viacom is fighting back with a counter-suit filed Wednesday.

There are those who accuse the Wii of just being a revamped GameCube. Not to say I agree with them, but a recently dug up patent reveals that the Wiimote technology was originally meant for the geometry-inspired console.

This is just getting ridiculous. Yet another company is suing Nintendo for its Wiimote tech. The lawsuit claims that the Wiimote is violating their patent for a video game controller.

Is suing Nintendo the "in" thing now?

Well we all know how much of a problem data storage is on the Wii, but it seems Nintendo's solution might be a bit overkill. A newly uncovered patent indicates that they are looking into holographic data storage, what may very well be the next media storage tech after Blu-ray, with future models being developed to hold up to 1.6 terabytes of space. Details in the full article.