Update! Nintendo's Official Response: Previously played copies of the 2005 DS game Animal Crossing: Wild World were sent to 14 members of the media to demonstrate the ability of players to transfer items to the new Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii. We regret that an offensive phrase was included without our knowledge via a wireless function that allows user-generated catchphrases to spread virally from one game to the next. This version is limited to 14 copies created for media review purposes only and is not available at retailers. We sincerely apologize for the incident and are working with media who received the game cards to return them to Nintendo immediately.
Original Article: If Nintendo offers you something "customized," run. Run very far away.
Because see, Nintendo customized the content of specific copies of Animal Crossing: Wild World for members of the gaming press. In doing so, Nintendo told the journalists, perhaps unintentionally, exactly what they thought about them.
Spoiler alert: All the copies of the game sent to journalists contained a racial slur.
Stephen Totilo over at MTV Multiplayer first discovered the "extra content" when he encountered Baabra the Sheep and she very casually and lightheartedly referred to him as a...ummm...bad word. We can say "lightheartedly" because it was a variation on the slur, ending in an "a" instead of an "er."
Nintendo has yet to comment on the situation, so it's not clear exactly how this happened; (see the update above) however, the prevailing thought is that a lowly programmer did it as a joke, not knowing the content would be copied for others to see. Either that, or a it was an angry employee looking to take revenge a la cute, furry animals, which we all know is worse than when it's served cold.
Either way, it left several people thinking they'd had the wool pulled over their eyes and that Baabra the Sheep is a bit of a jerk.
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