Nintendo recalls Mario Party 8 in UK

via Games Industry


Nintendo has recalled all copies of Mario Party 8 in the UK due to it containing an offensive word.

The title was released for the Nintendo Wii on Friday and has seen heavy promotion over the weekend with TV advertisements.

"Unfortunately we have discovered that a small number of games contain the wrong version of the disk due to an assembly error," reads a statement from the company.

"We have therefore decided to recall all copies of the game from UK retailers so that this mistake can be corrected."

Last month, Ubisoft was forced to pull all copies of DS game Mind Quiz in Europe after it was found to contain offensive comments.

Nintendo said it will announce a new release date for Mario Party 8 shortly.

Does anybody know what the 'Offensive word' in the game is? I bought it on the day it cam out from a local PCWorld, and a few hours later they stopped selling them, so i probably still have the offensive version!

The word 'spastic' is in the game. It's obviously considered very offensive in the UK, wheras in the US it isn't (hence the common use of the word 'spaz' over there). The DS game last month was pulled for the same reason (calling someone 'Super Spastic' when they were at the lowest level).

The 'wrong version of the disk' is their way of saying that they didn't have a UK playtester and as such it slipped through the net. I wouldn't be surpised if it takes a couple of weeks for the new version to arrive, as they will need to make the change to the code, re-sign the code, remaster and duplicate all the disks, and then swap the disks out and send them back to retailers. Quite a long process for one simple mistake, but I suppose it's Nintendos 'family friendly' image that's on the line!

Will

Spastic has two meanings, one in being offensive towards disabled people.

In the context it is used here, it is refering to making the train spastic in a spell. Which would equate to making it silly, or stupid or can be used short from spasicated, to mean its gone wrong or broken.

As this game doesn't refer to any certain player or character as a spastic and is merely used to make an object "train" spastic, I am rather confused to why people would pick up on it and feel offended in someway.

Calling the train silly, stupid, broken or wrong would not be a problem,and with this derives spastic which is used in perfect consideration as far as i'm concerned.

Even in Mind Quiz the term "super spastic" is fine really.
Achieving a 0% score would rightly rank you as silly, an idiot, stupid.
By using the word spastic, again it infers stupid, which you are in all fairness if you get 0%.

Maybe they should ahve used "silly billy", but that would still ahve the same meaning as spastic in this context.

All I can say is, people who complained about it, and felt the need to complain, should get a reality check and relise that its perfectly fine. Kids probably were playing Mario party 8 and turning round to there parents and saying your a spastic, your stupid, knowing full well what it means.

This makes me :rofl:

My game should be here tommorow, I wont bother changing it for an unspasticated game.