Mario Party 8 UK recall

mh:awesomegames:Mario Party 8, a party game for the Wii, was originally scheduled to be released in the United Kingdom on June 22, 2007, like the rest of Europe, but an announcement by Nintendo on June 19 pushed back the release of the game in the United Kingdom to July 13. Upon release, however, the product was recalled immediately. Nintendo claimed that it was an "assembly error". The "assembly error" stems from the situation that some copies of Mario Party 8 in the UK were released with the original, unmodified dialogue.

One reason for the recall is that during Shy Guy's Perplex Express, Kamek/Magikoopa says, "Magikoopa magic! Turn the train  spastic ! Make this ticket tragic!". "Spastic" is generally not offensive in North America and Australia. However, "spastic" is offensive in the United Kingdom for being a pejorative term against disabled people. Retailer GAME confirmed this, and these copies have been recalled. The game was later returned to shelves on August 3, 2007 with all copies having the word "spastic" replaced with the word "erratic". The same line was revised in North America, and now Magikoopa says, "Let me use my magic to make this all a little more interesting!".

A spokesperson from Nintendo said "The offending word has been replaced at the code level and the software reproduced. We are confident we have taken the correct appropriate levels and action necessary and in all-new versions of the game there are no issues – however, we cannot 100 percent guarantee that every copy of the initial batch was returned to us and as such there may still be a small number of copies of the game in circulation." Nintendo also confirmed that there would be no change on pricing and stock levels would "remain unaffected for the re-launch."

The result of this incident is that for future games, there are now different localization teams for North America (NOA) and Europe (NOE). An example is Mario Kart Wii, where the texts in NTSC and PAL versions differ substantially.

One month earlier, an incident also involving the word "spastic" prompted Ubisoft to recall copies of Mind Quiz in the UK.

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