Playing Nintendo Causes Blisters?

drxenon writes, "In this story on AltaVista Live, the real truth about those hand injuries is made known. Nintendo is offering up to $80 million (US) worth of gloves for buyers of the "Mario Party" Nintendo64 game. Over 90 complaints have been filed concerning blisters, cuts, and other hand injuries!" The article gives info on how to get *your* gloves. If you're a Nintendo user, go for it!

Comments

Info from hotline

[Mike Schiraldi]

I called the glove hotline, and it said these were just off-the-shelf sporting-goods-store gloves, no nintendo logo or anything.

Also, they seem to only want to send one glove. (They ask you to specify whether you want left or right) Maybe they'll send up to four gloves, but only one in each size / orientation.

You need to send them one of the following:

• A receipt for the game
  
• A credit card statement showing a purchase of the game
  
• A cancelled check for the game
  
• The UPC code, cut out of the side of the box
  
• The first page of the instruction booklet
  
• A photo of the cartridge
  
• A photo of your TV, with the game onscreen.

Also, they need an outline of the player's hand, traced on white paper, so they know what size.

Since it's just an ordinary glove, and they're being pretty generous, please don't screw them over.

Tobacco Companies.. Same Responsibility?

[mikeylebeau]

So if Nintendo has to supply gloves to those whose hands are damaged through excessive Mario Partying, should the tobacco companies be paying for the health care of those dying from lung cancer through smoking, etc?

Accountable for stupidity

[Xenex]

The problem with the Mario Party games is the fact that in some of the mini-games the N64's analogue control stick needs to be quickly rotated. Some gamers go about this by using their palm on the top of the stick, instead of their thumb as ALL of Nintendo's documentation suggests.

I have played the game a bit, and I personnally use my thumb most of the time, however when I do use my palm, my IQ kicks in and i SIMPLY DON'T PRESS HARD! My younger cousins (ie: under 12) have problems with this, and sometimes get blisters. I have taught them to use their thumbs, or press softly... problem gone!

Companies should not be held accountable for product misuse. This is like blaiming soda bulbs for children's deaths (they are for drinks, not for rockets.) This sounds like a Geeks in Space awhile back:

Something like this (off the top of my head):

CowboyNeal: Once I was injured by a Microsoft Natural Keyboard
CmdrTaco (I think): Dude, that doesn't count when your mom wraps it round your neck...

They then talk about the time he got his hair caught in an IntelliMouse :)

But, would this be M$'s? fault? Of course not! Why blaim Nintendo for stupidity, or a lack of parental supervision?

Stupidity should not be allowed to rule the day.

For those who don't party

[lapdog]

Many people seem to be implying with their posts that Nintendo shouldn't be responsible for people hurting themselves from playing too much. This isn't exactly the case. For those who don't play Mario Party, here's how it works:

The game is kind-of-like a board game. The object is to get as many stars as possible. The person with the most stars at the end is the "Super Star". Stars cost money, and at the end of every turn, the players play a [semi]random mini-game in competition for coins. The hand devastation comes from some minigames where the way you win is by rotating the analog stick as fast as you can. (Games like tug-of-war and pattle battle). Nintendo put grips into the tops of their analog sticks so that it would be easier to make fine controls in games like Mario World, which is really just shortsided on their part, thinking that all that stick would be good for is meneuvering in a 3D enviornment.

Anyway, after playing even one of these minigames where the object is to rotate the stick, your hand is raw. In most minigames, this is not the objective, but they are frequent enough that by the end of the whole game, you are in some serious pain (even though you had a great time).

This is probably one of the most fun nintendo games there is. Its designed for 4 players at a time, everyone can see the whole screen all the time (no split screen [ala any first person shooter or any racing game] where you get some small fraction of an already small screen), and no one can become a "master" and just make the game uninteresting for everyone else. Rent it and call some friends over. Then get some free Nintendo brand gloves too =].

This free glove thing is just a little late. They recently released Mario Party 2 (more of the same thing with some nice new stuff and more games), where all of the stick-rotating minigames have been removed.
Upside: At least Nintendo listens to their customers and tries hard to put good stuff in the box, unlike some broken, rushed-to-market, DVD, Internet, Stereo, do-everything-else-in-the-known-universe-for-under -$500, fit-video-games-somewhere-in-there machines.

Dave

Game Design Haiku

[drivers]

object of the game
rotate joystick rapidly
makes quake look like chess

Brief History of Game Controllers and Injuries

[bjb]

This is obviously a total marketing ploy, but hey. Why didn't they pay me off sooner? Let's look at some "fantastic" game controllers of the past 25 years..

• Odyssey2: Large sticks that looked and felt analog but were actually digital. One fire button (oh, I mean 'action' button). Threw my wrist out slinging that stick back and forth with K.C. Munchkin.
• Atari 2600: Classic controllers, but caused nice blisters on my left hand (holding the base). Had a tendency to cause you to strengthen your stick hand since they had so much give past their digital switch.
• Intellivision: Shoot the person who came up with this controller. If you didn't get some kind of stress injury trying to press those tiny damn fire buttons on the sides of the controllers while trying to press the number pad (through an overlay) while trying to fiddle with that disc "joystick" that rotated for no electrical reason.. still, had the best football and baseball games to date.
• Colecovision: Shoot this person, too. Only really got blisters on my right hand since it cupped the "joystick mushroom" or whatever the heck you want to call that thing. They got it right when they created the Super Action Controllers which felt like holding a Sabre sword. If the games weren't so damn good (at the time), then I think there would have been ritual destructions of these controllers.
• Vectrex: Someone was trying to get it right here, but the size was all screwed up. Wouldn't mind stuffing Macintosh guts in this thing, though.
• Coleco Gemini (2600 clone): Had to mention this, because this was a ridiculous controller; half joystick, half paddle. Not too many injuries with this, but the controller felt cheap enough that it probably should have been paid by some of us.
• Atari 5200: Another casualty like with the Intellivision; who put those fire buttons there? I think I busted a few fingers with those.
• Nintendo Entertainment System: The bread winner; THESE people actually thought this was a decent controller? HA! The first time I actually considered permanent physical damage was after playing with these controllers. Sure, they were familiar to people who used to play with the old Nintendo LCD handheld games, but who ever said those were good controllers in the first place? Nintendo should have been paying us back then. I figure they're about 15 years late on this one..
• Sega Master System: Someone was smoking Nintendo's crack, but figured they could make it even more annoying by putting a screw thread in the middle of the 'joy-whatever' so that you could screw in a little stick "to make it a real joystick". HA! Injuries by the dozens here, I'm sure.
• TurboGrafix 16: No comment.
• Sega Genesis: The crack is getting better.
• Super Nintendo: The dawning of the age of the complex controller. Injuries are not just happening as a result of stupidly designed controllers, but now you've got 45 buttons to memorize.
• Sony Playstation: Another multi-button wonder. Fingers hurting yet?
• Nintendo 64: What the hell is that joystick doing there? See article for this thread.

Ok, a bit of a rant, but the point comes down to that I think after using all of these systems, Atari, Magnavox, Coleco, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Bally, etc. all owe me a buttload of money for the hand problems I have today. I did have a lot of fun with them over the years, but please.. who the heck designs controllers? Whatever..

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