10 Video Games That Caused Physical Injuries

10. Mario Party

When it comes to video games and pain, if you're a certain age you almost certainly have flashbacks to Mario Party. Not just the wounded pride and fractured friendships, but the broken skin.

The mini-games in Mario Party are all about variety; not just in theme and objective, but also how they're played. There are platforming challenges, tests of resilience and of course button bashers. Several in the original game, like Pedal Power and Tug o' War, tasked players with spinning the control stick as quickly as possible. It didn't take long for any gamer to realise that, if they wanted to stand a chance, they could spin the stick by using their palm rather than their thumb.

Driving a plastic, not particularly ergonomic, stick directly into the centre of your hand and rotating it in small circles? Yes, nothing could go wrong there.

The aches, friction burns and blisters that hundreds of players reported reached news outlets and Nintendo couldn't ignore them. Complaints with the New York attorney general led the company agreeing to pay $75k in legal fees and supply players with essentially safety gloves.

Come 2021's Mario Party Superstars, a game that combines memorable minigames from across the franchise, the dreaded hand-destroyers were all given an addendum that advised not spinning the stick with one's palm.