Nintendo yanks Mario Party 8 - offensive language to blame?
Pic seems to suggest as much...
Updated Nintendo has pulled its new Wii console game Mario Party 8 from UK shops just days after its release and during a massive TV advertising campaign for the title.
All UK copies of the game will be withdrawn from sale, the games console pioneer said, adding that it had decided to take this drastic measure because "small number of games contain the wrong version of the disk due to an assembly error".
However, it has been claimed, by CVG for one, that Nintendo pulled the game because it contained offensive language. Specifically, the site and others allege that at some point during gameplay a blue wizard called Kamek says: "Magikoopa magic! Turn the train spastic! Make this ticket tragic!"
And now a snap of the screen has appeared online, taken by Photobucket.com user Sargey22 on a Nokia N95 earlier this month:
Nintendo goes on the... er... offensive again with new Wii title
Nintendo has not officially admitted or denied the presence of this sentence within the game, but if it is there, as the picture shows, it sounds a lot like us to a classic case of mistranslation from the original Japanese rather than an attempt to shock.
All this comes just weeks after the word 'spastic' was allegedly used in a derogatory way in another game, this time for the Nintendo DS.
Ubisoft's Mind Quiz game was last month also said to display the words "super spastic" if players fell below a certain score. The game was later withdrawn pending a fix.
Ditto Mario Party 8: Nintendo said it will re-launch the title shortly.
Thanks to the Register Hardware reader who sent over the link to the pic
COMMENTS
Spastic...?
I thought we had got rid of that word and replaced it with the word SCOPE
i would have wet my pants if it had said SCOPE'er
lets not forget the the genius that was joey deacon
who taught us all the power of stickin your tongue into your bottom lip
while wiping your head with the back of your hand whilst trying to point at the floor with all 4 fingers
All this attention..
..has probably made it a must use word and a must have game, well done everyone it's at number 3 in the game charts.
not the first time.
It must have been last year when i read that a youth aimed wheelchair type device from America with 'spaz' written on it was criticised by a UK disabled group - who seemed to miss the point that it meant something else in America.
RE: I dont understand
Spotted Dick was around ages before it was the slang word for a phallus.
Spastic was around before it was made into a "taboo" word.
You can't compare the two really. And as far as calling someone a spastic is concerned, while I might say it to a fully abled person, I would never dream of calling it to my friend who has cerabral palsy. Even though he calls it himself all the time. Because he can understand the English language and knows the true definition of the word and recognises it as what his body is.
Wow..
..Kain has a valid issue, has anyone bothered to ask a majority of people with a disability what they think?
It seems that if ONE person complains or is offended then that is it, blanket rule. The largest example of this i see is the "N" word used typically to describe someone of African origins... used by a white person it is deemed racist, highly offensive and people get sacked from employment etc etc for using it... yet every American rap artist says it 40000 times a minute and it's deemed ok because they happen to have the same origins.
Where does it end?
As for an example of young children possibly offending people by using the word, your average school playground these days will probably find the word spastic used regularly, not necessarily because they've heard it on a game but from older children. It is not used in it's correct sense and is meant in a derogatory fashion, but purely because of the name and nothing to do with the disability.
Also consider the curiosity of a child.... i have been in shops several times with my nephews to be created by questions such as "Why is that woman black?" "Why has that person got one leg?" kids are curious and say/ask things as they do not understand... it's an education that's required not a dictatorship on what we should do, say, learn, know etc....
