House of Mario
A Wii Pain... by Brian Murdoch
O
ne Saturday I was playing on the Wii with my 4 year old son. We went from Ben 10 to Mario Kart to Wii Sports and I finally ended up trying to teach him Super Mario Bros. Wii. He is a very bright child (as every father would call their son) and he is picking up the control and actions very fast. My wife was working on her computer in the same room and I thought that we were disturbing her, so we moved out. My son and I ended up play-wrestling in his bedroom after this and had a small accident… my son’s head hit the side of his bed and split the skin open. A wonderful trip to the clinic and a few stitches later, I found myself thinking. If we had carried on playing Wii my son would not have hit his
head... Compare the hit on the head to the small injuries that I have received playing the Wii: like the time I was sitting behind my son helping drive in Mario Kart, and he lifted the steering wheel into my lip. In the past there have been lots of reported injuries regarding the Wii and news articles on how dangerous the Wii is. I think at one point there were more Wii related home injuries than any other type in the UK for the a few months. But I would like to bring the idiot factor into consideration. 99% of the time, when a Wii remote is thrown into a TV, it is because the strap was not used. How many warnings are there to put the strap on? How many people have hit their
hands on the wall, chair, or ceiling fan ignoring the warning saying that players should make sure there are no objects around while playing? Do they miss the big picture of a person swinging their arms around in the warning? Add to this that some people that don’t exercise and have had previous back problems are now blaming the Wii for making them use creaky joints and aggravating back problems. Did the Wii not advise you in the health and safety warning that if you are not sure whether you should be playing that you contact your GP and confirm that this extra movement would be safe? As time goes by I think that Wiirelated injuries are decreasing, possibly because the current, informed population have learned from other’s mistakes. There is a site where they ask you to report your Wii damages: www.wiihaveaproblem.com There are a total of 231 reported damages on the site at present... and there are 60 million Wiis out there. We can’t assume that everyone that has had an injury will report it on this site so let’s assume that only 1% of people that have Wiis will report an injury. That would still be around 600 000 incidents. The actual percentage is closer to 0.03%. That means 3 in every 10,000 Wii their owners will suffer an injury. Still, you should pay careful attention to the health and safety warnings – they are there for a reason. g
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