Nintendo Wii Fanboy

It's funny, I'm British, and I don't get it either. I wasn't aware of any particular controversy around the word

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I'm from the UK and "spastic" is considered a pretty offensive insult. To the best of my knowledge it used to be an acceptable term to refer to a physically/mentally handicapped person. But then it started becoming used as an insult and became very taboo.

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I am from the UK and would class "spastic" as an offensive word to have in a video game. Especially one aimed at younger players.

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someone at ninty didn't do their localization homework.

reminds me of how the word "sega" is banned in a lot of games, since it means something naughty in.. I think portugese.

I wonder though, how well Sega games sold in Portugal then. Did pretty well in Brazil.

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Number 1 is pretty much right.

It used to be a sort of acceptable term to call somebody who was mentally handicapped.

I cant quite think of an analogy to help illustrate but maybe something like midget/little person.

While it WAS acceptable, its become a fairly offensive word in the UK.

Myself...i'm not bothered by this word being used in a game like this. If the ratings board decides that by having this word in, the game deserves a different rating, well thats a different thing...

But if they're just pulling this game off shelves to try and save face, its a bit of political correctness gone mad.

Take this for example:

In america, i believe the term "Fanny" is used to refer to somebody's ass right? Well in the UK if you say Fanny, its a slang word for vagina, yet whenever i see a TV show from america, the word fanny is never bleeped/replaced/cut, despite being an established offensive word in the UK, because in the context, its clear that the word fanny isn't being used offensively in the way a UK resident might.

Are we going to totally change games for the UK, just because a few cultural differences are lost/changed in translation.

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I was reffering to comment 2 by Hame at the start actually, my bad.

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I think it's fair to say that "spastic" is as insulting a term for people with certain physical disabilities as the n-word is to people of African descent.

So Wii Fanboy has compounded the problem by thinking "spastic" is insulting because it's a term of abuse for "a drooling retard", rather than because it is a pejorative for people with cerebral palsy. Whoops fellas. There goes your cerebral palsy readership.

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Its like the word retarded over here, then. It used to be perfectly acceptable to refer to the mentally challenged as such, but now it isn't, but on a stupid note, the other legitimate uses of the word retarded (to refer to things other than people) have also become taboo

People have to learn that words alone aren't offensive, its intent that counts...

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Here in the UK, the word spastic is generally seen as very offensive. It's OK to use it in its "medical" sense, but other than that it's a pretty big no-no. I'm not surprised at all that Mario Party 8 was recalled for this.

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Why do you think there are so many terms used to describe people of lower mental capacity? It is that words are used to label things. So if psychologist use a word like stupid to describe someone with a low IQ and people start using it they create a new word then a few years down the road it repeats and now language is evolved to have a surplus of words to describe the same thing. If a particular disease is horrible and the word is used it does not make the people who used said word bad.

Also if the Mind quiz game correctly called out a person who was playing "spastic" who was actually spastic then the game is actually more advanced than we all know.

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"spastic" is a very insulting term here in britain, and it doesn't help for wiifanboy to be complaining and critising the recall. whatever people think of the word in the u.s. , it is totaly different over here.

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Hmm, I'm British, and I really don't see spastic as THAT insulting as a few of you other Brits claim it is o_O.
I'm not sure why #12 is saying WiiFanboy shouldnt critisize the recall...they are based outside the UK and only want people on the site to know what they think about this issue.
Just a quick correction for Sam though (even when I agree wit hthe rest), the game was recalled by Nintendo themself...the ratings board didnt even care about the word. If they did, the game wouldn't have even made it onto the store shelves in the first place. This is all on Nintendo.
It's just sad really, remove the thousands of shipped copies of the game to remove one word. I work in a game store myself and was able to buy one just before we were told they were all needed to be recalled. The game's great, and isn't worth spending thousands to fix a minor word issue. Can't we just live with it? I mean, there are games available out there which uses FAR more offensive language than 'spastic'

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It's like the word "retard" in the US. It's a verb, meaning "to slow down." It was used medically to refer to people that were, well "slow" if you know what I mean. Mentally speaking. Mentally retarded.
Of course, the community at large eventually caught on, and started saying things like "what are you, retarded?" and calling people "retard" when they did stupid things. Obviously, this became established in the public realm as an insult, in which case it became politically incorrect to use the term to refer to people that are like that because of a medical condition of some kind - that is, the people the term was invented to describe.

Now imagine if Mario Party 8 had a character say "What are you, retarded?" when you failed a minigame. Wouldn't you be a bit caught off guard?

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It is a pretty insulting word over here. It was during the late 70s/early 80s that the top kids TV show 'Blue Peter' tried to replace the word with the name 'Joey Dekin'. Joey was a dissabled boy who was campaigning to stop people using the word 'spastic' in a derogatory way. So from then on people would say 'Joey'... but nowadays it is even quite insulting to call someone a 'Joey'. Spastic is a pretty immature word to use as an insult and anyone using it is probably a bit backward themselves. Generally making fun of human conditions isn't a joking matter and Nindendo have done well to recall and avoid any problems down the line.

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I want to start a major movement to insult ugly people by calling them handsome, dumb people by calling them smart, and inept people by calling them talented, and make it so effective that these words are banned.

I will then go on to make the word politician be an insult for people abused as children (I figure that will get the word banned faster) and politically correct will be a term applied to any homosexual with AIDS (That will likely get banned faster than the abused children would)

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Wow, Grey. The subtle satire in that "plan" of yours really shows how smart and talented you are.


See what I did there?

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No, Nintendo are right to recall this. While the word may seem less offensive to Americans it is considered to be quite offensive in the UK - Its not as bad as the 'N' word, but your getting pretty close.

Imagine a family playing the game and one of the kids has a medical problem and for it to say "Magikoopa magic! Turn the train you "drooling retard"! Make this ticket tragic!" - your saying that isn't offensive?

Oh, and good call Sam on the "fanny" reference. I can remember watch a Sabrina episode with the "Shake your Whammy Fanny" song in it thinking "My God Fanny on Nickelodeon, brilliant."

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"Imagine a family playing the game and one of the kids has a medical problem and for it to say "Magikoopa magic! Turn the train you "drooling retard"! Make this ticket tragic!" - your saying that isn't offensive?"

Actually, you're reading the original comment wrong. He was saying to turn the train itself spastic, not calling somebody "spastic". I think it's referring to spastic as in a spasm. Like, make the train move uncontrollably. I've played that board on the game, and it just made the train carts change order.

So no, it's not offensive. It's merely unfortunate that the term has other connotations in the U.K.

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joey deacon wasnt a young boy - he was an old man!
and they didnt want people to use his name - they wanted to show that.. .ahem... spastics, were real people too.
of course it failed and led to such classic playground games as 'i'm joey A con', you're joey B con, i'm joey C con - and so on!

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Being from the UK, the phrase spastic isn't used as much as it was in the past, now a days people call one another names relating to the body. But those types live in council owned houses and live off benefits getting into trouble with the law on a daily basis only to be released because of the lack of prisons because of one moronic party beginning with L and ending with R

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I think the reason was that the customer who first reported it had a disabled son who died earlier that year. Obviously he would be a bit more sensitive to the issue than most.

I think the term used in the Mario Party context is innocent. Personally, I would love to see a game call me a spastic if I don't do well! I can see why other people may see otherwise though.

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