We’ve just had a tip from Dtoid artistic guru Lauren letting us know about some bizarre news relating to yet another case of videogame controversy in the UK, and this time the perpetrator of offense is none other than everyone’s favourite turtle killer Mario.
The GAME retail chain has recalled the seemingly innocent Mario Party 8 mere hours after its release, citing the fact that the game contains “a swear word” as the reason. Of course, this isn’t the first time a supposedly benevolent Nintendo game has turned out to harbour linguistic horrors able to corrupt the sweet lexis of our poor children. A brief but moronic media outrage hit out at the DS version of Animal Crossing a couple of months ago as a result of the discovery of some bad words contained in the game’s online user-generated content. Nintendo, you fiends! But what’s the reason this time?
After some detective work, Lauren has discovered that the game features a minigame in which a Magikoopa uses the word “spastic”, but while the phrase has obviously got some seriously offensive colloquial connotations in terms of mockery of the disabled, it seems the whole thing might well be a really unfortunate mix up. In the context of the game, the word is used with it’s original meaning, which as the ever lovely Dictionary.com tells us is as follows.
Spastic
–adjective
1. pertaining to, of the nature of, or characterized by spasm, esp. tonic spasm.
The minigame in question instructs the player to make a train shake, presumably through some manner of Wii remote-related malarkey, but while the word is used legitimately, Nintendo’s translators really shouldn’t have tried to be so impressive with the thesaurus this time. Seriously guys, I know you don’t want to incurr the mighty wrath of muscle-man Reggie, but really, sometimes less is more. Anyone for Prince Phillip as an unlockable character in Mario Party 9?
[Thanks to Lauren for the tip and the pic]
