Nintendo reportedly included a safeguard in the Wii U game NES Remix to prevent Mario and Luigi sprites from appearing overly intimate during certain animations. The detail, identified by a game-technology expert, has attracted attention because it shows Nintendo anticipating and restricting an unusual visual outcome in a compilation built from older NES games.

The alleged measure is described as an “anti-brother romance failsafe”, referring to code that stops the brothers getting too close on screen. NES Remix, released for Wii U, reworks classic Nintendo Entertainment System challenges into short, altered scenarios, creating combinations of movements and sprites not necessarily intended in the original games.