Nintendo Switch Sports brings back the motion-controlled, sporty fun of Nintendo’s Watermelon video game, Wii Sports, for a new generation of players. But with the return of tennis and bowling in the living room comes a curse: the ominous ghost of smashed TV screens.
Published in 2006, Wii Sport was famous for its ability to make video games avoidable hardcore gamers. Dozens of eight-year-olds got their first taste of a Nintendo game with Wii Sports, by using the simple and intuitive Wii Remote to relive the thrill of bowling in a virtual alley. But Wii Sports became infamous for another reason: Players wildly whipped their Wii remotes with such force that the controller slipped out of their grip, slamming and sometimes cracking LCD panels, creating inadvertent and expensive abstract digital art.
Years later, the Wii had yet to escape this reputation, even despite its dramatic warning screens that lamented players using the remote control wrist strap. Flying Wii Remotes even became a joke feed for Hollywood with the 2009s Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.
Just a few days after Nintendo Switch Sports‘release, the threat of broken TVs and screens has returned. Over the weekend, there were at least two unconfirmed reports of players letting their Joy-Con controllers fly and claiming the lives of a couple of perfectly good screens.
On Reddit, a Nintendo Switch owner named Roman admitted to smashing a TV screen while playing Nintendo Switch Sports‘chambara mode, a sword-fighting meeting-American gladiators sports.
The novel’s first reaction, he said, was to turn off and then turn on the TV in the hope that it would fix this very visible wound – but to no avail, of course.
And on Twitch, streamer 63man showed his viewers what a fast-moving Joy-Con can do on a screen. The man said he was playing Nintendo Switch Sports “very passionate[ly]”And threw his controller directly on the screen. “Now my screen is corrupted,” 63man said in a YouTube upload of the incident. “It was fun, though […] 10/10. “
Many Nintendo fans saw the new wave of screen destruction coming Nintendo Switch Sports as an inevitability. “And then it starts again,” Reddit user Mykeprime said in response to Roman’s Reddit post about his broken TV. “This is the content I’ve been waiting for,” replied another.
Of course, Nintendo itself has foreseen the return of the flying video game controller. The company has built-in warnings Nintendo Switch Sports to tease players to secure the included wrist strap accessory for their Joy-Cons before playing. But how many Switch owners will either bother to do so or even remember where this accessory is? Mine, never used, are still sitting in their original plastic bags from Switch’s launch in 2017.
How many of these events in the year 2022 will be genuine, and how many will be Switch owners who want to go viral or gain influence? We need to remain skeptical but vigilant when it comes to stories of Joy-Cons turning off screens. While some may be accurate tales of folly, we should not take any irreparably scarred screen at face value.
More importantly, everyone actually has to wear their wrist straps when playing Nintendo Switch Sports. Like seat belts and face masks, it’s better to be safe than sorry. And by the way, you can always order replacement Joy-Con straps directly from Nintendo if you should have misplaced yours.