The myth of mercury in the WarioWare:Twisted cartridge?

[Da Robot]

Inspired by this recent post by Younglink, about how there seems to be this persistent idea/rumor about this game and it's lack of a European release. So I decided to use Google and look into it and see where did it originate from and is any of it true? And why wasn't it released in Europe in 2006?


Is there actually mercury in the gyro sensor?


The short answer is nope.

There is NO MERCURY.

This here is the gyro sensor in question. A piezoelectric gyroscope.

(scroll to bottom of page, where it show the sensor in the WW:T cartridge)

www.nec-tokin.com/english/product/piezodevice2/ceramicgyro.html




And no, if the rumble motor contained mercury, than certain GB games like Pokemon Pinball and Perfect Dark and even the DS rumble pak would have never have been released in Europe.

Also if it contained mercury do you think Twisted would have even been released in Japan, North America and Australia.




So where does the mercury rumor originate from?

After looking into this, there seems to be two re-occuring factors.

A Swedish gaming magazine and Neogaf.

In late 2005, A Swedish gaming magazine(s) claimed that the game has trouble passing EU safety regulations for electrical products.

link



That Neogaf post appears to be the first mention of it online.

And then two posts below that a user mentions "hearing that it had mercury in it" before being corrected by another user."


Two months later in early 2006 on GAF that same user says the "I was told the tilt sensor has mercury in it which is not allowed in toys in the EU."

link

They are not corrected by anybody.


Now August 2006, another Neogaf user (and others) brings up the mercury problem again

www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4136444&postcount=6

Thankfully they get corrected at the bottom of page.




Then in August 2007, this info get to posted to this very forum from another Swedish gaming magazine (that was released 6 March 2007)

link

(Who would have thought this forum would have gotten involved with this? )


Could it have been possible that the false mercury info from GAF influenced another Swedish magazine into combining "trouble passing EU safety regulations" with "mercury tilt sensor?"


Over the next few years other site would mention it, but with no source as to where the "mercury issue" comes from. and only in the past few years was it slowly dismissed as a rumor.



In Feb 2008, mercury in WWT is brought up in the GBATemp forums, but dismissed as a rumor. (But also seemed to cause trouble for people importing it for some reason?)

gbatemp.net/threads/gbas-hidden-gems.76477/#post-1005684


In Feb 2009 this website posts the article top 10 games not released in the UK, also claming the mercury issue.

www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a145010/feature-top-ten-games-unreleased-in-the-uk/



While in June 2009, Gamespot also claims the mercury issue as well. (dead link but citated on Wikipedia).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wario_video_games#cite_ref-twisted_28-0


September 2010 Pocketgamer posts a top 10 GBA they want to see on the 3DS, and bring up the "mercury tilt switch" issue again. in this lovely quote.

"The original game never reached European shores, apparently due to the tilt-sensor’s mercury filled tilt switch. I guess the LGA were worried that kids would crack open the cartridge and neck the glorious silver liquid inside."

"Or, that the game is so addictive it’d put the country at an economical standstill."

www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/3DS/Nintendo+3DS/feature.asp?c=23899



In September 2011, another top 10 list of GBA game from Screwattack mentions this "failing to pass EU regulation (something about mercury)"

www.screwattack.com/news/top-10-gba-games-i-want-ambassador-programme



November 2012, when doing a Wario retrospective, the mercury problem is brought up and is dismissed as a rumor which has never been proven. (Thank you Chris Carter!)

www.destructoid.com/100-series-retrospective-wario-236363.phtml



In Janurary 2013, when talking about Kirby: Tilt N Tumble and it's lack of Euro release, blames it on mercury and European law, holding that game and WWT back.

obsoletegamer.com/kirby-tilt-and-tumble/


February 2014 Poceketgamer brings up the the mercury issue but says it's a rumor. Both Pocketgamer articles were written by the same guy, Mark Brown.

www.pocketgamer.co.uk/feature.asp?c=57738&sec=23

---

So why does everyone think a tilt switch contains mercury?

Most likely because there is such thing as a mercury tilt switch, though it's states are binary, either it opens or closes an electrical circuit and doesn't do any degree of measure between that (unlike a gyro sensor). If you did electronics in school, you problem have seen one/used of these. (I know I did).






So why wasn't WarioWare Twisted released in Europe then?

After the long expected release delays, WWT and a few other GBA titles such as Drill Dozer, release were cancelled in Europe in 2006. In 2006 was the final year of the GBA in Japan with releases such as Mother 3 and Rhythm Tengoku being some of the last Nintendo published GBA titles that never received a western release. The DS had taken charge of Nintendo's handheld scene and the GCN was also in it's swan song year with the Wii looming on the horizon.


Around the world this most likely caused Nintendo other divisions to just release whatever profitable GBA titles that were left (like Pokemon spin offs) and just focus on DS and upcoming Wii games for it's launch.


Another factor is sales and cartridge costs. Both WWT and Drill Dozer* with it's rumble cartridge used different cart/extra components against other GBA games meaning it would have cost more to manufacture them against standard GBA carts. While in JP/NA poor sales of those games most likely didn't help either. Despite the fact that a game like WWT got incredibly good reviews from NA outlets.



*was translated for Euro release (thanks to the recent Wii U VC version Euro language selection/different credits proving that a unreleased Euro rom did exist).






This post took me a while to write without breaks, I might update it again but I think this is a good wall of text.

[kirbychu]

I remember people saying the mercury thing was the reason Drill Dozer was cancelled here too. Which made no sense, since the game didn't even have a tilt sensor.

[nocturnal YL]

This is awesome! I could kind of guess what really has happened, but I never knew it in details.

Of course, like everything else, it has to be those few forums that started the rumours. And it has to be those few reporters who propageted it.

And yeah, I think it's probably the nonstandard catridge that has ultimately led to its cancellation. The transition from GBA to DS was a rather chaotic one.

[Manspeed]

I hate how game rags always believe unsubstantiated rumors, then continue to spread them, leading even more people believe to believe them. The 'net needs more all-encompassing posts like this one.

[Swedol]

Sorry to bump, but just found this thread. Interesting that the post from the forum in 2007 was actually posted by me.

Anyway, the Swedish gaming magazines involved "Super Play" and "+N" were both run by the same people pretty much. I still have the one from 2007 laying around somewhere, so I could check who wrote that article. But both magazines at least had a guy called Tobias Bjarneby as the Editor-in-chief who began his career in the Swedish Nitnendo Magazine back in 1990, later founded "Super Power" which became "Super Play", and now is the Editor-in-chief at the magazine "Level".

I just decided to Google around a bit, but in Swedish. First of all, the Swedish Wikipedia Article mentions exactly what was said in "+N", although not giving any source. According to this article, the motion sensor contains some mercury and was made by NEC. It also gives this link to what would be the motion sensor: www.nec-tokin.com/english/product/piezodevice2/ceramicgyro.html

At the same time it mentions that Yoshi's Universal Gravitation uses a motion sensor, but that these are of a different construction.

I do find a blog post in Swedish at the Swedish website Loading written by a gaming journalist called Oskar Skog: loading.se/blogg.php?user_id=12&blogg_id=279

Translation:

"You can stop waiting now.

Warioware: Twisted will never get here.

No, no one has dared to say it officially yet. But the best portable game of 2005 will not get here. So I am saying it.

Stop waiting.

It is not Nintendo's fault. Don't blame them. It has something to do with the technology in the cartridge, some governmental agency somewhere who does not allow it due to some laws from the EU.

Something like that. Vaguely. No one says anything concrete.

Did you miss the best GBA game of the year, Drill Dozer?

I would have done so too.

Same reason. Same tired reason."

Another article I found from 2006 claims that it will be released in Europe, also mentioning that mercury was the problem, but was somehow solved. This also mentions it as the reason for Drill Dozer and Metroid Prime Pinball not being released in Europe. www.hype.se/nyhet/46626

After this "confirmation of release" the same Oskar Skog replies to it that "Bergsala (Swedish Nintendo importer) don't dare to confirm this". loading.se/forum.php?thread_id=399&page=2#21686

Could this whole thing originate come from Bergsala themselves? And also, the original posts does not mention mercury. Could it possibly have been something else that was problematic according to EU regulation that was not related to mercury, but something else?

Considering both Drill Dozer and Metroid Prime Pinball being mentioned, both of these contained a rumble pak function, as did Wario Ware Twisted. This would imply that it is the rumble pak that was the problem rather than the motion sensor. By the time this problem was solved, it was too late to bother with the GBA games, but Metroid Prime Pinball was released as late as June 2007 in Europe. Almost two years after North America.

Well, I don't know anymore right now, and I gotta sleep.

[Da Robot]

^
You have done anything wrong, I was just following the discussions of whenever someone mentioned WWT and mercury, just trying to find out where it origin was. This whole rumor saga is very bizarre and it's frustrating Nintendo (of Europe) never commented about it officially. Then again maybe they assumed people would just forget or just import.

Heck, that Brain Age: Concentration Training for the 3DS has still not been released in PAL regions after nearly 4 years without word as to why.

[Swedol]

It wasn't really a defense speech. I just became genuinely curious of the rumor's origin, since it seemed to have its origin in Swedish gaming magazines.

One possible origin would be if the rumor came from the official Swedish Nintendo forum that was around back around 2005-2006 where actual Swedish Nintendo staff members posted. This forum was later closed since Nintendo didn't allow "official forums", but the forum continued to be run as an unofficial one for several years.

Sadly, hardly anything of this forum is archived on archive.org so I can't confirm that this would be the origin of the rumor.