Nintendo’s Power-Up Band—a physical key to Japan’s upcoming Super Nintendo World

• 

  The official Nintendo Power-Up Band, sold exclusively at Super Nintendo World in Osaka, Japan. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

After years of rumors and teases, Super Nintendo World, the world's first major theme park dedicated to a video game series, is set to open in exactly one month. We already received a comprehensive walkthrough last month, courtesy of Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, and now, ahead of SNW's public opening on February 4, we've gotten another tantalizing look at how the park will work—all by playing with one of its exclusive, Mario-branded wristbands.

That's right: we're in possession of an official Power-Up Band, the RFID-fueled system used to do practically everything at Universal Studios' most gamified theme park zone yet. Even better, its theme park interface is already translated to English, so we were able to sync the system with an official app and see detailed hints about the park's inner workings.

This merch came to Ars thanks to a well-placed reader, who was invited to a limited December preview of the park and graciously offered to send us the Power-Up Band when he was done with it. If you've seen other footage of the park trickling onto social media since late December, that's all largely due to other patrons attending around the same time window, but nobody seems to have gone one further and shown exactly how this plastic slap bracelet (yes, it's a slap bracelet) interfaces with the park's rides and puzzles.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments