Nintendo are now Patent Trolls

[A Black Falcon]

Why put so much effort into defending a company who release ripoff games with copied characters in them?  Seriously, if they're going to so blatantly copy characters, why would it be in any way surprising that they'd copy more than that?  I don't think it is at all.

As for Nintendo's early history, technically Pac-Man was inspired by a Sega game called Head-On, which I think is the first game in that specific genre.  Head--On and Pac-Man are pretty different, but if you look it up you can see the connection.  Devil World is certainly a game in that genre, but the moving screen that you can't control is an interesting gimmick that I don't think anything else did, so it's not just a copy.

And as for Donkey Kong, adding a jump button was one of the most important innovations ever in gaming, probably, so that one really isn't all that close.  Space Panic is a DK predecessor but DK evolved things substantially.

Balloon Fight DEFINITELY is Joust, though.  I'd think that Midway would have had a good case had they sued Nintendo over that one.  Some games in the early years of gaming were 'it's like this popular game but a bit different', but with Balloon Fight there's basically nothing different other than Balloon Trip mode, and I don't think that is enough to make it actually a different game.

Anyway, Nintendo usually wins lawsuits. I don't think they would have filed this case if they didn't think they had a very good case.