I got my first Nintendo console when I was 11 years old. It was a used Wii from a consignment shop in Kentucky (fulfilled by Amazon!) that I used to play Kidz Bop Dance Party! and Dance Dance Revolution II. Unfortunately, these were the only games my parents allowed me to play on it. I wasn't allowed to own any other game discs – I wasn't even allowed to look at them unless it was through saran wrap! For the other games would lead me to Drugs. And the one who is covered in saran wrap, sees no evil. and certainly no Drugs.

I vowed that one day, I would go to Nintendo myself and get the rest of the games. But I couldn't figure out where it was, because the Web Channel was disabled in the parental controls. And when I asked my friends about directions to the place where I could unlock all the video games, they just told me something about the "Konami Code".

So it was quite a surprise three years ago when, just having arrived in Seattle to finish my degree and studying maps of the area, I noticed that the Nintendo headquarters was not far away! I did not immediately visit, for I had other, more immediate priorities in terms of technology conglomerate breakins. I had also just joined a hacker space on University Way Northeast and needed to get some of my knowledge up to speed – I had never dealt with any Prock Smocks before, and I definitely didn't understand who the Cougar Netties were or how they managed to move my FairPlay brute-forcing scripts around the server room with such efficiency. I wanted to thank them, so it would have been useful to know who they were. but alas.

Yet to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. So one day last April, in an exasperated break from my undergraduate thesis on how to RFID-spoof a lockpick, I decided to give it ago – show up to Nintendo, explain to them my predicament, and, at long last, run off with the rest of the Wii games. Maybe even learn The True Meaning Of The Konami Code.

I wasted no haste and I hasted no waste. I headed down to 43rd street to catch the Five-Fourty-Two, making it barely in time to catch the last bus of the night. We expressed right to Overlake Transit Center, where I transferred to the T-Mobile Magenta Express commuter van (whose keys I had obtained on a previous escapade), and rolled right into the Nintendo headquarters.

Unfortunately, thanks to a recent update that I had yet to brute-force in the FairPlay DRM, all of the locks in the Nintendo Headquarters detected my RFID-spoofing, and demanded that they would only open for an official Nintendo employee lockpick. But one building stood just open – the parking garage. I rolled right in, Magenta Express and all.

If you've never been in the Nintendo parking garage before, it's quite the sight. It seems like it's themed after some sort of cartoon go-kart racing game, full of employee go-karts to match. As I was getting my bearings, I noticed a hard drive labeled "DATABASE" next to some keys, in, wait a second, is that Doug Bowser's car? Doug Bowser left his keys in his car? In a heartbeat, I dialed.

"Nintendo of America, Facilities, how may I help you?"

"Hi! I left my keys in my car."

"What floor?"

"Green."

"No problem. I'll come down with the nunchuck."

Window down and keys obtained, and just as it was dawning on that poor facilities employee that I bore no particular resemblence to Doug Bowser, I sped off in Doug Bowser's limited edition themed go-kart and got on Ess-Arr-Five-Twenty back towards Seattle. I stopped to pick up some FRS radios and yarmulke cleaning fluid at Fred Meyer, and meandered the store a bit as I browsed the hard drive I had found in Bowser's car. (It turns out most stores will let you get up to just about anything as long as you meander around and look like you'll eventually buy something.)

While I couldn't tell much without dedicated software, from the looks of the filesystem metadata, this was a PostgreSQL database dump from a Nintendo employee Mattermost-over-LoRa server hosted out of Bowser's car. It's hard to say what was discussed on it, but the term "Konami Code" did seem to come up quite a lot. Yet one tag in particular caught my nose: "Nintendo of America".

This was just the American Nintendo??!?

I did not go to all this trouble for some American knock-off, I reckoned. When I make my way through the headquarters of a monopolizing conglomerate, I take nothing less than world number one, ground zero, creme de la creme, Airstrip One. Maybe that's why there was such a dearth of games around. "I didn't bring my RFID-spoof Nintendo lock picks for this!", I thought to myself in meandering disgust. Maybe these damn Konami directions could get me somewhere more worthy of UW thesis work. North, North, South, South, East, West, East, West, East? That's just back right here in Bellevue. ABAB Start? A little more elusive, at least. Maybe that's the hidden meaning, the topic of all these Mattermost-Over-LoRa discussions?

And then they got me and took me. I refer, of course, to the soldiers in the War on Drugs. They always get me, and they always take me, for I am Drugs. They were slightly less impressive this time, probably due to federal workforce cuts, but I was still no match for them, for, true to their name, they were on quite good drugs. There are never spending cuts to Drugs.

So how did I reclaim my freedom? How did I carry forth the holy database? How did I get these goody-two-shoes technocops to understand that I mean no harm, it's just that me and my friends, we don't buy bottles, we bring 'em, we take the drinks off the tables when you get up and leave 'em, and I don't care if you stare and you call us scummy, 'cause we ain't after your affection, and sure as hell not your money, honey?

I covered them in saran wrap. For the one who is covered in saran wrap, sees no evil. and certainly no Drugs.

Yet this is merely the start of my trials. If you've ever tried to read a PostgreSQL database, you will know well and true its central security feature: PostgreSQL is so orderless, so kafkaesque, so tempestuous – that its databases can only be meaningfully read by the same programs that write them. It is thus, that in order to read this Mattermost database and extract The True Meaning Of The Konami Code, I must connect it to my own instance of Mattermost.

So I ask you, oh dear Cougar Netties, that you might assist me a smidgen in binding together my one, singular Prock Smock, dedicated to protecting the future security of Drugs and various other tasks, that we may learn that which is closer the truth; that we ourselves may arrive closer to the divine.

May your lips speak words of wisdom, and may the world you live in be the world of your dreams.