Some gamers who've already picked up Nintendo's new-and-improved 3DS have discovered a wonderfully squee-inducing secret buried inside the console. If you tap out the beginning notes of Mario's iconic theme music when in the browser menu, the interface will turn into the classic block-breaking arcade game Breakout.
Everyone knows the first bar of the Super Mario refrain by heart at this point, right? Duh-duh-duh duh-duh duh, duhhhh. "If you tap out the Super Mario Bros. theme's opening bar on the "new page" screen of the New Nintendo 3DS' browser," The Verge's Sam Byford wrote after discovering the feature through a Vine post, "your list of most visited sites changes to STAGE SELECT and you get to destroy each URL brick by brick in a Breakout clone." The first six notes trigger the switch, and the final "duhhh" starts the game.
Ok, I'm not a musician and it occurs to me that writing "duh" a bunch of times isn't the best way to describe something that you hear. So here's a video showing how it works:
Little treats like this are why so many people love Nintendo. The easter egg perfectly mimics the way that players find secrets in the actual Super Mario games that inspired it. Seeing someone unlock it almost makes me willing to forgive all of the horribly clunky parts of the interfaces featured in Nintendo consoles. They may not get everything right all the time, but they also put a tiny present in the system that turns something as bland as a selection screen into yet another game. It's like the developers are saying to audience, "We know we make mistakes, but we still care about you and want you to have a great time." That's a nice message to receive—as a gamer, as a consumer, as a human being.
Now why can't we all just have the new 3DS already?
via The Verge