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Don’t lick your Nintendo Switch game cartridges; company says games taste terrible on purpose

Posted at 3:21 PM, Mar 03, 2017
and last updated 2017-03-03 15:23:41-05

Kyoto, Japan — With the Nintendo Switch hitting stores, tech writers, vloggers and gamers are testing everything about it — including the taste. One guy found out very quickly that the tiny game cartridges taste absolutely awful.

In spite of the warning from Giant Bomb co-founder Jeff Gerstmann, others were quick to taste-test the cartridges for themselves. According to available reports, they all regretted it almost instantly.

The video game site Polygon said a Nintendo representative confirmed that Switch cartridges are coated in a material that’s meant taste bad so people won’t put the units in their mouths.

According to Polygon, Nintendo applied a bittering agent to the game card. The representative stated that the substance, denatonium benzoate, is non-toxic.

“Nintendo recommends keeping Switch cartridges away from children ‘to avoid the possibility of accidental ingestion,'” Polygon reported.