This year, Nintendo co-branded with Lego and has launched the LEGO Super Mario, which is a set of toys that can be used to play Mario games by building the blocks.
Now a hacker inventively turns the Mario figurine into a physical controller -- use the Mario mannequin released as part of a Lego Super Mario toy set to move the Mario in the game.
The self-declared “hardware hacker” @r1ckp shared two vids of his creative results.
As you can see in the videos, @r1ckp tilts Lego Mario backward and forward to move around the game world of Super Mario Bros., and with the right movements, Mario can jump, shoot fireballs, and head down pipes.
This is all because Lego’s Mario figurine contains some rather interesting tech including an accelerometer, color sensor, gyroscope, and Bluetooth.
@r1ckp says he simply intercepted the signals Mario was sending over Bluetooth and plugged them into the emulator’s controls.
The difficulty lies in figuring out the bluetooth protocol. Then it‘s just simulating keypresses at certain events. The whole setup took “about 4 hours,” said @r1ckp on Twitter.
He would be sharing the code at some point, allowing others to duplicate this fun little hack for themselves.
