I've heard of spasms of course...I just don't link the insult "spastic" with the condition...just like "lame" is pretty much acceptable in pop culture...

For most people its like calling someone a retard...but watch who you say it to, b/c if they have relatives or friends with these kinds of diseases then they will be very offended.

 your right, lots of medical terms have made their way into common laguage without much notice,such as , lame, spas, retard, mental, psycho, cripple.......now I´m sad.

Well I wouldn't call anybody a retard, maybe I might let it slip that something is "retarded," but I try to restrain myself from my grade school insults...

I call alot of the FPSes out there "spastic" because they are so fast run and gun, just completely unrealistic, like UT and Halo, etc.

This is funny though, it's good to see that the UK is just as concerned with something so unimportant as the US is. Screw wellfare reform, a video game called my ADDDDHHDDHD kid spastic, get em!

Hmmn... have already been playing MP8 for four weeks, and if this word has been there it haven't offended me or my pals. :)

Just get over it guys, some people find it offensive. And those people are CUSTOMERS. Also known as, paying customers, if they noticed something IN GAME. Why would Nintendo or other game companies ignore a paying customer? You might think something can't get "Lost in Translation" from America to England, but it is almost two different languages.

To me this issue isn't over the words used specifically but how the situation is handled.

If Nintendo recalled voluntarily then no big deal. If the UK forced a recall then its censorship and I have a problem with it.

I am just of the opinion that the buying power of customers should be the only thing censoring a company. Obviously this is within reason, certain things go to far but "spastic" and/or "retard" is not something so offensive that a government needs to get involved. I think they have more important things to deal with (and I will leave it at that, I really don't want this to go into politics).

The word retard is used so often it has no effect on anyone, just like calling someone stupid. Unless you are calling someone who suffers from a Mental disabilty a retard, then you might have a problem but other than that its ok.

But i'm pretty sure anyone who is playing MP8 is a wiitard :P

No kidding ken, but then again, I know that a lot of people say things like this if someone acts foolish or whatever, and if I can have any influence on the people around me to quit making light of a baaadddd and probably life-long condition, then I should probably speak up.

 I beleive quite strongly that most people will want to do the right thing most of the time, but sometimes it takes a nudge to get them going in the right direction.  Do you remember when gball was getting some heat about whatever?  I just mentioned that she probably had DDD's and everybody didnt know what they where talking a bout....pretty soon a lot of people started following my lead and the problem was solved.