Did Nintendo Mean to Put This Plan B Joke in "Yoshi’s New Island"?
Aw, Nintendo. The family-friendly video game company responsible for your friends Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Peach, Toad and the gang. Players zoomed down war pipes. Raced through the rolling hills of Moo Moo Farm.
But wait. What's that. Is that a Plan B joke?
Yes, yes it is — it's a Plan B joke.
A reddit user spotted this screen in "Yoshi's New Island," which says:
"Ok. I get it. You're clearly not giving up the baby without a fight. Time for Plan B... "
This isn't the first unseemly easter egg to creep into a Nintendo game. In "Donkey Kong Country" you can make Donkey Kong hump a metallic version of himself. In the original version of Super Mario Kart, Princess Peach chugs a champagne bottle in victory. There's also an allusion to a hidden adult toy in Princess Peach Toadstool's room in "Super Mario RPG." And there's a massive pink penis-shaped rock on Peach Beach in "Mario Kart."
So this Plan B joke isn't a mind-boggling discovery. The wording can likely be attributed to Nintendo's Treehouse division — a team of around 80 people who translate text from Japanese to English when bringing games from Japan to North America.
Whether it was meant as an innocent pun or a huge oversight, it's a joke that could be taken as offensive — mocking an emergency contraceptive measure that about 5.8 million sexually experienced women, ages 15 to 44, used between the years of 2006 and 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And those playing the game could very likely be women: A Pew Research Center report found that 42% of U.S. women own a games console compared to 37% of men, and another report found that 50% of men and 48% of women say they play video games, nearly equally matched.
Giant geographical animations that look like dicks or boobs are entertaining — albeit, a tad childish. But a joke about an emergency contraceptive many women rely on is distasteful.
We reached out to Nintendo for comment and will update with any response.
