The manual for the Turret Tower arcade game reads like an Army recruitment ad. "Who knew saving the world could be this fun?!" it proclaims. "Three different weapons to choose from!"
Next to the slogan, a happy geek fires pretend bullets at the screen.
But what if the game — which spins players around in a chair while they shoot aircraft — could put you in real danger? That's what happened to 12-year-old Jon Anthony Muniz at GameWorks in South Miami. The game "trapped and injured" him, resulting in "disability and disfigurement," a recent lawsuit claims. Jon is one of at least four kids who have reported injuries from Turret Tower in the past three years.
In March 2008, Jon — an energetic and lanky Killian Oaks Academy student — stopped for a burger with his mom at the South Miami restaurant/arcade. Afterward, they walked upstairs to a massive game room. Jon eventually entered the Turret Tower, a blue plastic structure with a door, and played a few rounds.
From the outside, his mom, Annelis Muniz, heard the sound of Jon's excited voice echoing. "I thought he was making so much noise because he was having a good time," she says. But when the door opened, she realized "he was screaming and crying in pain." His leg had been crunched between the spinning chair and a card-swiping box inside, she says. It cracked his right tibia just below the knee. She rushed him to Jackson South Community Hospital, where doctors set it and wrapped it in a candy-red cast.
Shirley Fields, the GameWorks general manager, didn't return calls seeking comment. Nor did GameWorks corporate representatives.
Muniz's lawyer, Spencer Marc Aronfeld, claims the swipe box — used in place of coins — should have been attached to the outside of the machine. It was put inside to keep kids playing. "It's an example of a corporation putting profits over the safety of people," he contends.
A report from GameWorks' insurance company, Hylant Group of Cleveland, offers few details about the other Turret Tower traumas. There was a fractured arm in Schaumburg, Illinois; an injured left knee in Laredo, Texas; and a scratched back at the same GameWorks location in Miami-Dade.
Says Aronfeld: "[The company] needs to be much more careful. The game is still sitting there in South Miami."
