Spiders, Spiders! Nintendo Cartridges Smuggle Spiders!
I thought the shiny cardboard boxes that consoles and Nintendo cartridges came in were pure. I thought that what I was getting out of the box was straight from the factory, and that Nintendo’s CEO Tatsumi Kimishima personally boxed up my order. I thought wrong.
A Nintendo NES games update has confirmed that old cartridges are being used to smuggle in illegal goods to the United States. What kind of goods??!?! you ask? The bad kind; 73 spiders had been hidden in old Famicom game cartridges, which were intercepted at the United States-Mexico border. They couldn’t even use real NES cartridges.
According to Mexican newspaper La Crónica de Hoy, 73 plastic tubes were found in the haul, all containing arachnid hosts. Spiders, guys. They’re talking about spiders.
The ten cartridges were intercepted at customs in Guadalajara International Airport earlier this week, with the packages heading for Hanover, Maryland. So watch out, Hanover! Someone could be harboring illegal giant man-eating spiders in a neighborhood near you!
THANK GOD the Switch cartridges are considerably smaller than the OG Nintendo cartridges, and the Switch cartridges can’t be taken apart, filled with spiders, and then shipped to parts unknown … right? Switch cartridges can’t be taken apart? Did we confirm this? Crap. Well, at least you could probably only fit five spiders in there. Just five. Also don’t forget about the dock, which can easily be taken apart. Pretty big base on that guy, I’d say you could get at least fifty of those bad daddies in there with some room for a bag of meth.
According to Mexico media, the packages did not have the required documentation and were apparently flagged because of it. Nor should they, because there is no check box for “Game Cartridge But Also It’s a Game About Spiders, and There Are Spiders Inside the Game, Please Do Not Open the Game, All the Spiders Will Be Lost, and ‘Spider Attack’ the Game Will Be Ruined.”