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Nintendo Faces Continuation Of Seizure Lawsuit
Thanks to 2TheAdvocate for its article discussing a lawsuit against Nintendo regarding their videogames causing seizures. The suit, which has been in progress since July 2003, claims that Nintendo "failed to report that its games contain defects that presented a 'substantial hazard' and create an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death." In Nintendo's defence, they claim that they "instituted some recommendations... [including] a limit on the number of times per second a light can flash, and a limit on the brightness of certain lights and their duration on the screen." As a result, "the number of seizures reported to the company by consumers has dropped from 22 in 1999 to six in 2003." The trial will continue until later this month.
And how was Nintendo expected to know that there games presented a miniscule risk of causing epilepting seizures??? I mean, that's not a normal part of the debugging process is it (buffer overruns fixed - check!, memory leak fixed - check!, doesn't cause seizures - "we'll just slip this one under the rug). Should Nintendo be expected to hire a panel of 1000 seizure prone patients to test the game? And the number one question is : Why aren't manufacturers of strobe lights being sued???
Japanese Seizure Robots!
(Don't click if you really get seizures!)
Nobody reads instruction manuals, maybe Nintendo should repeatedly flash a big bright RTFM at the start of every game as a gentle reminder.