Saturday, August 25, 2007
The Deep Blue of arm-wrestling
Arcade game manufacturer Atlus Co., announced Tuesday it will voluntarily recall all 155 units of its Ude-damashii arm-wrestling machine installed across the country, as three people have broken their arms playing the game since its release late July.
The Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo-based company has also requested arcade proprietors take the game out of operation, and will look into the cause of the accidents following the recall.
According to Atlus, all the units were designed for wrestling with the right arm. The game, which was sold to arcades across the country, has ten power levels. If a player keeps winning, he or she can challenge "opponents" at three different levels during each game.
To date, the company has confirmed that a 25-year-old male South Korean tourist in Osaka, a 19-year-old male French tourist in Fukuoka and 24-year-old Japanese man in Kyoto all broke their humerus--the bone between the shoulder and elbow--in their right arms.
Arm-wrestling game recalled as 3 break arms
The Yomiuri Shimbun
***
Not wishing to sound alarmist, but this is the beginning of the end. It's all very well computers being able to defeat us at chess and suchlike, but now they're physically beating us up.
Next thing you know:
knock knock
"Sarah Connor?"
"Yes?"
Ka-boom.
The machines are rising.
