> Namco had a patent on the idea of "a minigame playable during a loading screen".

When does that date from?

Because I remember playing "Invade-a-load" on the C64 in the 80s, while waiting for (I think) Slimey's Mine to load off tape. It was fun enough that sometimes I would stop the tape and just play space invaders for a while.

(edit - ah, and there it is, at the bottom of the fast-loader article on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_loader

"In 1995, Yoichi Hayashi of Namco Ltd. invented a variant of the Invade-a-Load technique for use with optical disc based platforms such as PlayStation and applied for a patent. U.S. patent 5,718,632 was granted in February 1998 and assigned to Namco despite the Invade-a-Load prior art."

Hey, I guess that means...

Edit again: got my timelines wrong, 1995 was 30 years ago, this thing is long-expired. Ugh, I am old...)