Nintendo withdraws game that taunts 'spastics'

For the second time this month, Nintendo has taken a game off the shelves for using the word 'spastic'

Nintendo has been forced to withdraw a computer game from sale in the UK because it contains the word 'spastic' in its script.

Mario Party 8, a multi-player game for the Wii console, went on sale in the UK on Friday but was taken off the shelves after the mistake was discovered.

In the game, designed to be played by groups at parties, a blue wizard called Kamek appears on screen and intones: "Magikoopa Magic! Turn the train spastic! Make this ticket tragic!"

Nintendo said in a statement: "Unfortunately we have discovered that a small number of games contain the wrong version of the disk due to an assembly error. We have therefore decided to recall all copies of the game from UK retailers so that this mistake can be corrected."

It is the second time in as many weeks that a Nintendo game has been withdrawn for including the word 'spastic'.

Earlier this month, MindQuiz, a 'brain-training' game made for the Nintendo DS by the French company Ubisoft, was pulled because it branded players who achieved low scores 'spastics' and 'super-spastics'.

Games experts said that computer game translation – like film dubbing – was prone to errors because translation services often did not take account of the meaning of words in particular cultures.

Nintendo said that Mario Party 8 was developed in the US, "where the word does not have the same offensive connotations as in the UK." The inconsistency was not identified early enough when the title was produced for the UK, the company said, and as a result, 2 per cent of the first batch shipped to the UK contained the American wording.

Andrew Rickell, executive director of Scope, the disability charity, praised Nintendo for withdrawing the game, but said that games manufacturers needed to do more testing locally to weed out similar errors.

"'Spastic' is an extremely offensive word. It is a medical term which refers to the inability – or limited ability – to control muscle movement, typically among people who have cerebral palsy, but the wider meaning is of someone who is incapable of doing something, either physically or mentally," he said. "It is simply not allowable in the UK."

Gavin Ogden, editor of the online games magazine computerandvideogames.com, said that Nintendo was unlikely to be damaged by the incident, and if anything would sell more consoles as a result.

Nintendo would not say when Mario Party 8 would be re-released.

Sony was recently forced to issue an apology for using the interior of Manchester Cathedral as the setting for a violent PlayStation 3 game, Resistance: Fall of Man.