The specter of broken TVs returns to haunt Nintendo Switch Sports

polygon.com:

Nintendo Switch Sports brings back the motion-controlled, sporty fun of Nintendo’s watershed video game, Wii Sports, for a new generation of gamers. But with the return of in-living-room tennis and bowling comes a curse: the ominous specter of smashed TV screens.

Released in 2006, WiiSports was famous for its ability to turn the video game-avoidant into hardcore players. Scores of octogenarians got their first taste of a Nintendo game with Wii Sports, using the simple and intuitive Wii Remote to relive the thrill of bowling in a virtual alley. But Wii Sports became infamous for another reason: Players were wildly whipping their Wii Remotes with such force that the controller slipped from their grasp, striking and sometimes cracking LCD panels, and creating unintended and expensive abstract digital art.

Years later, and the Wii had yet to escape this reputation, even despite its dramatic warning screens chiding players to use the remote’s wrist strap. Flying Wii Remotes even became joke fodder for Hollywood, with 2009’s Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

Just a few days after Nintendo Switch Sports’ release, the threat of busted TVs and monitors has returned. Over the weekend, there were at least two unconfirmed reports of players letting their Joy-Con controllers fly, claiming the lives of a pair of perfectly good screens.

On Reddit, one Nintendo Switch owner named Roman confessed to shattering a TV screen while playing Nintendo Switch Sports’ chambara mode, a swordfighting-meets-American Gladiators jousting sport.

Roman’s first reaction, he said, was to turn off, then turn on, the TV in the hopes that that would fix this very visible wound — but to no avail, of course.

And on Twitch, streamer 63man showed his