Nintendo drops the N-bomb in Animal Crossing

Somewhere out there, a PR person is having a very busy morning. Through no fault of his or her own beyond perhaps a little carelessness, he or she has put copies of Animal Crossing: Wild World into the hands of 14 video game journalists without realising that each of those copies contains the dreaded N-bomb, otherwise known as The Worst Word in the World.

He or she sent the game out to demonstrate how easy it is to transfer content from the DS to the Wii, but the copy he or she sent out had been played by a Nintendo employee who had taken advantage of the fact that the game allows you to create your own verbal content to include the word n---a.

Baabara the Sheep is the character who delivers this slur, introducing herself with the sentence "How are you, n---a?" before going on to say things like, "Just thinking about it gets me all excited, n---a", "I almost forgot about you, n---a", and "So got any juicy gossip for me, n---a?"

To be fair, the Nintendo worker responsible for introducing this word is probably unaware of how amazingly, eye-wateringly brutal it is in the west.

Not that the wider public would ever know about it had it not been for the blogging efforts of the 14 journalists who received it, and in particular MTV Multiplayer's Stephen Totillo, who broke the story, and was good enough to later publish Nintendo's response.

To paraphrase: "We weren't aware that copy we distributed contained this slur, and it will not feature in any retail version of the game. It was put in there by an employee, whom we now hate."