Nintendo recalled Mario Party 8 this week, in the UK, due to the word 'spastic'. At one point in the game, this blue wizard guy comes on the screen, and says: "Magikoopa Magic! Turn the train, spastic!"

While 'spastic' is a mildly offensive term in North America, for the Brits, the word has a few more negative connotations affixed to it. Enough negative connotations to warrant a recall. There is no word when the game will be back on the shelves. 

The Nintendo people had this to say: "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 claimed that only %2 of the UK Mario Party 8 games have the 'spastic' in them. The use of the word 'spastic' may be chalked up to a translation error, similar to odd-sounding translations in some films.

This is the second time in two weeks a game has been recalled from the UK for the word 'spastic'. The first game was Ubisoft's MindQuiz. In that game, if you did poorly in the tests, the game called you a spastic. If you did really poorly, you're called a super-spastic.     

If you do own a Mario Party 8 with the "Turn the train,spastic!" line in it, Ebay might be a good idea.