Patent 7690994 was granted and assigned to Nintendo on April, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A game controller includes an image-capturing section, and outputs, as control data, a captured image itself or a result of performing a predetermined operation on the captured image. Using the control data obtained from the game controller, distance data regarding the distance between the game controller and the imaging target is calculated. A predetermined game process is performed on a virtual game world based on the calculated distance data. Then, the virtual game world after the game process is displayed as an image on a display device.