Hahaha there was no animosity. We just had a gentlemans agreement to not play and let the NPC's win. Sometimes that was favorable for you, sometimes it wasn't, but it was pretty fair over the course of the entire game.
I fell victim to this one on authentic “retro” N64 hardware, which has a hard plastic analog stick. Got an enormous blister right on the palm of my hand trying to win this tug of war. Of course, my young brain was able to hyperfocus on the game and completely tuned out any sense of pain in my hand. It was quite gruesome when I finally beat it and realized my hand was torn to shreds. I was at my neighbors place and I remember how shocked their mom was. She applied some cream that I think was meant for severe burns.
Nintendo would later run a campaign where they’d send you fingerless gloves for free to try to do some damage control on all the negative press when reports started popping up.
Yeahhh. I made my palm bleed trying to beat (I did, the first of anyone in my family lol) the Boo when he is coming for you on the stationary bike on what I think was Mario Party 1. I ended up being grounded for over a month lol.
It was only earlier this year that I learned about that glove campaign though. I would have loved a pair of those haha.
That does bring back memories. Painful memories. Rented that game back in the day. Then, I spent an entire day at a friend's pool trying to keep my hand above water because young me thought the water was bad for the wound. Swam the entire day like I had a question nobody would let me ask.
If you pinch or irritate your skin doing this, you have weak skin and it shall be your downfall in the battlefields of Mario Party, and it will be deserved.
I don't remember what minigame but it was for Mario Party for the GameCube. It required pressing A really fast and we found out you could drag your knuckles back and forth across the button to cause damage to both your opponents and your hand.
I’m reminded of a required minigame near the end of Star Fox Adventures based purely around button mashing. The requirement needed some dozen attempts when I was a kid and lead to strats involving rubbing a spoon on the controller.