It may be another countdown clock, but Sega's mysterious Jackpot page does have one thing most others don't - a clickable button. Between that and the hidden Super Monkey Ball reference, we're intrigued.
It's just a tiny difference, but we'll take what we can get. The countdown page, located at www.Sega.com/Jackpot, features a circular tumbler filled with colored, numbered balls, along with a switch. Here's where it gets crazy. Flipping the switch causes a set of six balls to roll out. See? Compared to other countdown clocks, this is amazingly deep. It's the Grand Theft Auto of countdown clocks.
After clocking at several different points throughout the day, it has been determined that the first two balls represent days; the second two hours; and the final pair represent minutes. According to Kotaku reader Brigham, this means that something will happen on Tuesday the 21st at 10AM Eastern time.
A cursory exploration of the page source, reveals the following line of code:
<embed src="jackpot.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="945" height="559" name="supermonkeyball" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" />
I suppose that makes sense. There are plenty of balls, and Sega knows that nothing goes better with balls than monkeys.
Perhaps that sounded a bit wrong. And perhaps the countdown isn't for Super Monkey Ball, and the coder just threw that bit in to mislead everyone. We're leaning towards a reveal of Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll, the name of which McWhertor discovered via the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last month.
Sure, we might have just ruined the surprise, but that doesn't stop you from getting countless hours of enjoyment out of flipping that little switch, now does it?