British fans of Nintendo’s popular Mario Party series had to wait a little longer than everybody else to get their hands on the franchise’s eighth installment back in 2007.
Originally scheduled to come out on June 22 of that year, Mario Party 8’s release date was pushed back to July 13 in the UK because of so-called “production issues,” which somehow didn’t affect any of the other versions that were already out there. However, the unspecified problems apparently hadn’t been fixed by the time the game finally hit stores.
“Unfortunately we have discovered that a small number of games contain the wrong version of the disk due to an assembly error,” began a July 13 announcement from Nintendo of Europe. “We have therefore decided to recall all copies of the game from UK retailers so that this mistake can be corrected,” it continued.
“We will re-launch Mario Party 8 in the UK as soon as possible and will announce a new launch date shortly. We very much regret any inconvenience caused.”
‘Mario Party 8’ Was Recalled in the UK Because of a Single Line of Dialogue
Though the statement was vague on the issue at hand, fans quickly suggested that an incantation used by Kamek in the game could have caused the delay. While changing the order of the train cars featured in the Shy Guy’s Perplex Express game mode, the character is shown chanting, “Magikoopa magic! Turn the train spastic! Make this ticket tragic!” Just one month prior to Mario Party 8’s release, Ubisoft recalled the game Mind Quiz after a woman complained about the inclusion of the word “spastic,” which is considered highly offensive in the UK.
When Nintendo eventually announced the Mario Party 8 relaunch, it acknowledged that the term caused the recall. “The offending word has been replaced at code level and the software reproduced,” a company spokesperson told MCV/Develop. “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.”
You can check out a video of the unaltered segment above.
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