RocketNews24

When Nintendo stated that Miiverse, its new online community and text-based messaging service, would be strictly policed and kept kid-friendly, they weren’t kidding!

Lifelong gamer and RocketNews24 reporter Kuzo has been tooling around with the office’s new Wii U games console for weeks now, and, thanks to the efforts of Mr. Sato who attended the Japanese launch last weekend, managed to get his hands on a Japanese version of the machine, which he’s been thoroughly enjoying.

Imagine Kuzo’s shock, though, when he stumbled across a drawing of a goomba – the little mushroom bad guys from the Super Mario games – spliced onto the end of a crudely-drawn love-wand while using his new console’s integrated social network! Even more shocking, though, was the speed with which Nintendo’s net police honed in and took care of the offending material.

Opened up to the real world and with users free to doodle whatever they please with their touchscreen and stylus, no one imagined for a second that Nintendo would have an easy job keeping its online community safe for minors to use. Boys will be boys and since the dawn of man and cave painting became cool, stick figures and doodles of dongs have been etched, scratched and painted onto rock, paper and frat boy forehead. So it was no surprise that someone would abuse Miiverse’s text messaging system to share some infantile sketches.

Goomba (C) Nintendo

But this was no ordinary playground graffiti! This was a beloved game character turned on its side, stretched out long and morphed into a schlong, complete with misshapen balls on the end! Goombas are far from the kindest of creatures, but they don’t deserve this!

Kuzo put down his gamepad and took a moment to think about the world he lived in.

Squish a goomba, sure; set it on fire, by all means; but turn it into a gentleman’s joystick!? No! This ends here!

Kuzo picked up his stylus and tapped the 通報 tsuuhou (report) button. “It’s probably a futile move,” he thought, “but a man has to make a stand somehow!”

Compared to the Wii U’s painfully slow settings menu, a second menu popped up almost instantly asking our reporter to describe the offending material in more detail. Lacking a “beloved childhood character defiled!”option, Kuzo clicked “obscene content”.

Knowing how multinational companies usually operate, Kuzo confirmed his report and returned to the Miiverse menu, wondering whether the content he flagged would be given any notice whatsoever. Mere minutes later, however, the offending material had been removed! Nintendo’s Miiverse cops had been in and out like a mushroom-capped hit squad; no sound, no survivors; no more mush-penis! And just like that, Kuzo was a believer in Nintendo again!

So if you’re a parent and concerned about exposing your kids to filthy-minded individuals online, or worried that they might see drawings of such inferior quality as the one Kuzo discovered and it stifle their creative development forevermore, rest assured that the boys and girls at the house of Mario, and our reporter for that matter, are definitely paying attention.

No penis shall go unseen! Not on our man’s watch.

▼No goomba I’ve ever seen has such stature!” scoffed our reporter.

▼Some more badly drawn porn pics our man discovered…

[ Read in Japanese ]