Nintendo and GAME FREAK applied for a Card Display Screen Apparatus patent in the United States and details of this patent were disclosed on April 26th, 2018 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The Inventor of the device is Koji Kawada and it was filed on October 25th, 2017 but it appears that work on the device began at least a few years ago as the Japanese patent was filed on October 25th, 2016.


The device seems to be intended for use in the Pokémon franchise as it is a joint patent between Nintendo and GAME FREAK and the patent indicates that: "In a game of this embodiment, the player can capture (collect) the character of wild monster by operating the player character and making it a fellow character. Moreover, the player can make the fellow character fight with the character of the monster owned by the enemy character. Furthermore, the player can train (raise) the fellow character and raise its level. For example, an offensive power or/and defensive power can be strengthened. However, the fellow character may evolve (deform) in some cases."

Patent Abstract:

A non-limiting example game apparatus includes a display device, and a card display screen including an image of a card object is displayed on the display device. The image of the card object is constituted by a character image arranged in the front most and a composite image that is arranged at a back thereof, and with the composite image is obtained by combining a color change image, a background image and a pattern image. The color change image includes a plurality of polygons, and a color of each of vertices is set so as to cyclically change according to an attitude of the game apparatus and respective vertices positions of the plurality of polygons. The color change image and the background image are combined with each other, so that brightness of the background image cyclically changes according to the color of the color change image that cyclically changes.

Source: http://pdfaiw.uspto.gov