The LEGO Super Mario Bros. Starter Course is interactive itself, but what happens when a programmer decides to hack the figure and turn it into a game controller? Well, you would hold Mario to jump, move and smash coin blocks. That’s right, a programmer who goes by “r1ckp” on Twitter did just that and what you’re about to see is the game running on an emulator in a Linux virtual machine on a MacBook Pro. Read more for two videos and additional information.
Wrote some code to use the #legosupermario to play #SuperMario pic.twitter.com/LOuECESPgT
— Rick (@r1ckp) September 2, 2020
Mario did not need to have any additional hardware added, as it already contains an accelerometer, gyroscope, color sensor and Bluetooth connectivity. So, all “r1ckp” had to do was hack the signals that were being transmitted via Bluetooth and then code them to the NES emulator. The entire process only took around 4-hours to get working, with most of the headache being to figure out the Blutooth protocol, but afterwards, it was just simulating key presses at certain events.
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Some people asked for it, so here's how shooting and pipes work pic.twitter.com/OACZYurh5u
— Rick (@r1ckp) September 3, 2020