Mario Party injuries
| This article was copied (instead of imported) from the now-deleted Crappy Games Wiki. |
Mario Party for the Nintendo 64 is a multiplayer party game featuring a series of minigames that spawned a sub-series of the Mario franchise. Though it is considered a good game, many of the minigames required heavy rotation of the Nintendo 64's analog stick to win.
Due to the uncomfortable design of the analog stick, many players used their palms to play these minigames. This caused many players to get blisters, friction burns, and lacerations on their hands. Minigames that rely on the constant rotation of the analog stick include Tug O' War, Paddle Battle, Pedal Power, and to some extent, Cast Aways and Deep Sea Divers.
Fortunately for Nintendo, no one filed a lawsuit against them but there were over 90 complaints made to the New York attorney general's office. Nintendo of America paid $75,000 for the cost of the investigation to the office and offered gaming gloves to everyone who got injured. Since it was estimated that 1.2 million users had the game, Nintendo's expenses for the gloves were up to $80,000,000.
Nintendo learned a lesson from the experience players were complaining about and since Mario Party 2, the analog stick has been used sparingly and by the time of the GameCube, Nintendo's analog sticks have gotten much more comfortable to use. Nintendo also did not create more minigames that rely on using constant rotation of the analog stick to win until Mario Party: Island Tour. However, because of the experience players received such as injuries when using the joystick, Nintendo never released Mario Party on the Virtual Console, until it was announced in the September 13, 2022, direct that Mario Party will eventually be added to Nintendo Switch Online in the Nintendo 64 Online software ending the long streak of Mario Party never being rereleased.
Mario Party Superstars brought back the two infamous minigames (Tug O' War & Cast Aways) with an in-game warning for players not to use their palms to avoid skin irritation and/or damage to the control sticks. Unfortunately, this may cause Joy-Con drifting due to the excessive rotating involved in these minigames.