You know how the original Mario Party back in, oh, 1998 had some minigames in it that required the aggressive application of your palms to the Nintendo 64 controller’s control stick for maximum efficiency? And how it thus resulted a certain amount of pain in the palm of your hand? Well, as it turns out, Nintendo has finally added a health warning about that…24 years after the fact.
Better Late Than Never?
Twitter user OatmealDome recently posted a Tweet pointing out something very interesting about the original Mario Party game. Specifically: about the version that Nintendo are making available for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. If you ever played that first game, then you might recall that the game starts off by showing you the Nintendo 64 logo as part of the intro. Well, as it turns out: Nintendo have added a health warning to the top of that specific scene in a very noticeable white bar. Check it out below:
The health warning reads:
CAUTION! To avoid irritation to your skin and/or damage to the control stick, do not rotate it with the palm of your hand. Rotate the control stick with your thumb or by holding it between your thumb and forefinger.
For some background info: there were certain minigames in the original Mario Party that required you to rotate the control stick at high speeds to win. The developers intended for gamers to just use their fingers to do so. Naturally however, gamers discovered that it was a lot more efficient and effective to use their palms to work that control stick. Unfortunately, this was a problem due to the way the Nintendo 64 controller’s control stick was designed.
The Nintendo 64 controller’s control stick was made of hard plastic, with circular ridges radiating out from the center. As you can imagine, pressing down on it hard and moving it around rapidly resulted in a certain amount of friction burn. I remember days as a kid with very sore thumbs simply due to that stupid control stick. Now imagine that same soreness, but on your palms. People actually complained of blisters and lacerations because of it. So you can understand why Nintendo added that health warning to Mario Party.
The only peculiar thing is that this health warning is only for the first Mario Party. I distinctly remember some later Mario Party games also required you to rotate that control stick, and some crazy folks/masochists insist on playing these old Nintendo 64 games on actual Nintendo 64 controllers. So why this warning is only for the first game and not the others confounds me. Maybe Nintendo will add them later? We can only hope.
Source: Twitter
