Mario Party Superstars mini-game features special warning on how to "avoid irritation to your skin"
After N64 original caused "second-degree burn".
A mini-game featured in Mario Party Superstars, which launches for Nintendo Switch this week, comes with a health warning.
Tug o' War, which was originally found in Mario Party N64, has a special notice with advice on how "to avoid irritation to your skin and/or damage to the control stick".
"Do not rotate it with the palm of your hand," Nintendo cautions.
Why the warning? As Kotaku remembers, this mini-game caused problems for Nintendo back in the '90s when kids complained they were getting hurt while spinning the N64's control stick with their palms.
Such was the outcry, the New York Attorney General's office got involved and Nintendo elected to offer pairs of padded protective gloves to anyone who wanted them.
"One kid got a tetanus shot," a spokesperson for the New York Attorney General said at the time. "The alarming thing was how little time some of these children spent playing the game before they were injured. One parent said their child had been playing the game for 15 to 20 minutes when they got a second-degree burn."
The tug o' war game sees one character dressed as Bowser attempting to win a pulling match. Players are supposed to rotate the control stick to exert pressure on the rope and pull, supposedly using their thumb. But, in the original, spinning the stick with your palm was found to be faster and more effective.
Is Nintendo concerned about a potential legal repeat in 2021? Or, perhaps, it is simply mindful of any potential damage done to the Switch's famously flaky Joy-Con control sticks.
Either way, this Mario Party Superstars warning shows Nintendo hasn't forgotten what happened last time around.