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Arm Wrestling Machine Recalled for Breaking Arms
Lucas123 writes "After three players broke their arms while wrestling with a Japanese arcade machine, the manufacturer promised to remove all 150 of the mechanized appendages. Said game maker Atlus' spokeswoman: "The machine isn't that strong, much less so than a muscular man. Even women should be able to beat it.""
My boss bought one and it was stored at one of our stores. We'd have customers who thought they were all tough use the machine and do some damage to their arms. I tried it a couple of times and had some seriously sore shoulder for a week. If you are out of shape or drunk you will hurt yourself on the machine if you try too hard or if you up the strength level of the machine.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
With a reply of "the machine is not that strong" it sounds like the engineering was done on paper. It doesn't take that much force to break an arm -- it's a question of torque more than force, and I'd bet the machine has plenty of leverage.
I remembered we had a boxing video game in a local gameshop. Players' punched on a padding sensor and the strength would be measured, and the screen will respond accordingly.
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The game was just fine until one day accident occurred. As a matter of fact, this was not the fault of the game design itself. A smartass attempted to hit the padding with a jump-side-back-kick with spinning, and missed, and broke his non-kicking leg as it was landed on the wrong place (well, as a witness myself I must say I'm not so sure whether he had planned any landing afterall).
Needless to say, the game was recalled for 'causing violent accident'.
Violent video game is OK as long as the players don't attempt to hurt themselves in most embarrass ways.
BTW, below is the no-full-page-ad of the headline story:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?co
Worse still, if a player is shocked by something (the sudden force of the game or your friend decides to drop an ice cube down your shirt), since the mechanical hand "grips" your hand with its thumb (assuming you held it properly), you can seriously mess your arm up if you try to pull away suddenly.
Easy. Lifting your elbow up provides an advantage through leverage. AKA cheating. Next time your buddy gets his elbow off the table while arm wrestling, kick him in the nuts.
I'm sorry, but I'm a US Marine(in the infantry) and I just have to say that you have no idea what you are talking about. You don't go into combat carrying just a 6-pound rifle(actually, its about 3 pounds), generally a combat load includes your flak(armor), your kevlar(helmet), no less than 6 full mags, your day pack which can weigh up to 40 or 50 pounds, plus any other random bullshit they make you drag along. In addition to that, in a 4 person fire team one person has a 203 grenade launcher, one has a SAW(which is a true bitch to carry all day with 1000 rounds of ammo), one has a extra barrel for that SAW, and the point man is the only one actually carrying just a combat load. The physical demands of combat are far beyond what you can even imagine, but just to get an idea, go wrap yourself in 60 pounds of junk then try to run 100 meters dropping to a prone every 10 feet. Sprint like hell when you get up, and hit the dirt in the time it takes you to say "I'm up, he sees me, I'm down", and see how you feel at the end of it. Are you starting to see the picture? Nobody is actually in shape for the kind of physical stress that combat puts on a person, you simply put out all you have and hope its enough.