Famous safety innovations, infamous recalls

Nov 12, 2007

In honour of those new rubbery flotation devices for Wii remotes, here’s our fave gaming safety innovations and product recalls.

1) Warning
Every game manual comes with a seldom-heeded warning to take regular breaks during play. The agonising Virtual Boy was the only console that actually enforced the rule, activating a pause screen every few minutes so users could rest their aching eyes.

2) Blister glove
Nintendo famously offered special gloves to protect against shredded hands caused by energetic rotation in some of the original Mario Party minigames, but we’ve never actually seen one of these rare gaming collectables. Did they too get shredded?