Nintendo’s Amiibo figures use near field communication (NFC) to work. Know what else uses NFC? A lot of public transport ticketing systems.
yollych here took this video not long after picking up some of the first Amiibo figures in Russia. In it, we can see the Samus Amiibo able to open the gates at a Metro station.
Now, one of two possible things has happened here:
- The Samus figure has code in it that somehow, coincidentally, plays nice with Moscow’s Metro ticketing system.
- yollych has modified the Amiibo, whether by cracking open the case and swapping out the chip or via some hasty programming, to broadcast ticketing information instead of Nintendo information.
Either of those things (though the latter seems more likely) is awesome. Id’ much rather have Link or Yoshi be responsible for my public transport payments than some piece of boring-arse plastic.
And while people are freaking out about this application, who’s to say it’s not just as impressive going the other way around? Maybe London’s Oyster cards can play a mean AC Villager in Smash…
Comments
9 responses to “Nintendo Amiibo Figure Somehow Opens Train Gate”
Maybe the gate knew that if it didn’t open quickly, Samus would shoot it with 5 rockets.
Some interesting stuff in that thread. Like a story about a guy who got pulled up for tampering with the system, because he’d migrated his card’s chip into a sonic screwdriver.
Also a link to an instagram video explaining that apparently the gate doesn’t actually open, the light just goes green.
No doubt Adam authorized Samus with the power to open the gate.
But she had to restore power first and get new abilities.
Let us not forget that samus is a hacker, sometimes known to fans as the statue hacker, as she can use her suit to hack into everything just by looking at something, dude that means the real world is not safe from her hacking!
So the Samus Amiibo is yollych’s Metro ID?
Or someone else’s 😛
If you think it’s a hoax, the easiest method would probably be to trim a normal metro card down to size, and glue it to the base of the statue. Provided you don’t snip the antenna, you should be good to go.
Or… Option 3: The detector assumes a Metro RFID card, and the light is poorly written to light up for anything.