NINTENDO TO SHIP LIMITED-EDITION GBA SP IN EUROPE

It said the new version of its handheld system will feature “a tribal tattoo pattern” that’s based on ancient designs originating from Polynesian and Indian culture. But it wasn’t immediately clear if the company had any plan to ship the new version in the U.S., and Nintendo of America didn’t comment by our deadline.

Nintendo Europe Mktg. Mgr.-GBA Tim Freystedt said the Tribal Edition “reflects the sentiments of today’s youth -- rebellion, attractiveness and spirituality.” He said the new GBA SP “allows gamers to express these emotions in a fun and interactive way, enabling them to communicate their individuality.” The company said tattoos are now extremely popular, noting that celebrities including Eminem and Angelina Jolie prominently sport them.

The company, meanwhile, wound up defending itself against charges that some of its games triggered epileptic seizures in some children. A BBC documentary, Outrageous Fortunes, that aired earlier this week in the U.K. made the latest claims. It charged that Nintendo knew about the problem and decided not to remove flashing sequences in some games that were said to have caused seizures.

But Nintendo Europe argued that “videogames do not cause epilepsy.” It said “a small percentage of the population has a pre-existing neurological tendency to have seizures triggered by exposure to flashing lights or patterns [and] medical research indicates that such people can have seizures triggered by television programs, computer screens, videogames, DVDs, movie screens, Venetian blinds, strobe lights, striped clothing and escalators.” The company said it started including a warning about seizures on its products in 1991, claiming that it “was the first videogame company to provide such warnings.” The company also said that “in the absence of established guidelines for videogames, Nintendo voluntarily prepared and implemented its own internal guidelines for game design and development in 1998 [and] the use of these guidelines has led to a clear decrease in the incidence of seizures triggered by videogames in susceptible individuals as confirmed by medical literature and by a decrease in reported cases.” The company said “nothing is more important to us than the health and well-being of our players,” so it “will continue to keep abreast of the medical research in this area and… apply that research to the design of its products.”

In Dec. 1997, there were reports that at least hundreds of people in Japan had been hospitalized after watching TV cartoons based on Nintendo’s popular Pokemon franchise. Nearly 700 people, primarily children but ranging in age from 3 to 58, were initially said to have been taken to hospitals suffering spasms and nausea after the cartoon displayed a series of bright and rapidly strobing lights of various colors following the explosion of a “virus bomb” tossed by the Pokemon character Pikachu. In particular, rapid changes between red and blue were suspected to have caused the problem. Later reports indicated that far more people reported becoming ill after viewing the program or TV news reports about the incident that featured the strobe effects. Further episodes of the series were then put on hold pending an investigation by broadcaster TV Tokyo. A Nintendo spokesman at the time stressed that there was no link between the company’s games and the cartoon apart from the use of the licensed characters.

A study called “Pokemon Contagion,” published in the Feb. 2001 issue of Southern Medical Journal, said fewer than 700 of the nearly 12,000 Japanese schoolchildren who became ill in 1997 were diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy. It said others who reported various symptoms more likely were responding to “epidemic hysteria.” Reports said a similar incident happened in the U.K. in 1993, prompting authorities there in 1994 to limit the frequency of strobing on TV to 3 flashes per sec. and regulating their brightness level.