You could argue against anything involving throwing a net to capture something, like monster hunter for the small fauna. Ark has “cryo pods” that function basically like pokeballs.

Bulma keeps machinery in tiny capsules

They should go after Rockstar for the mechanic of throwing a rope at an animal to catch it, if this is the criteria. Ridiculous.

The VG made by pocketpair before the patent was issued for one.

Summoning a dedra in skyrim?

Ratchet and Clank's glove of doom fits the bill

Does Ghostbusters count?

Helldivers has this, I believe. if a teammate dies then you have to throw an object to summon down a drop pod at a specific location

It's still somewhat protected in the US. The big one in table top gaming was tap mechanics from Magic. That expired in 2014 though. In video games the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor/war is also patented.

Erm, acktchually! I think Nintendo is pretty cringe here, not based!

(Sorry, I couldn't resist)

Literally just change the throw animation to use a weaker looking slingshot than whatever the current weakest one is.

It probably does with detachable controllers.

No, but we do have a proper Nvidia Shield Portable 2.