Like I’ve said here before, when a modder takes a perfectly perfect piece of Nintendo lore and makes a hard drive out of it, or turns a classic item from gaming history and begets a USB drive, I weep.

The victim today is Super Mario Bros. 3, arguably the best platformer title in history and possibly one of the best video games ever created by mankind.

As of this writing, there is one less of these fine cartridges left in the world. The one you see here has had its guts ripped asunder, only to be replaced with a 160GB USB hard drive.

Sure, one could put thousands of Super Mario Bros. 3 ROMs inside this thing now that it contains a hard drive, but the essence—and a bit of my childhood—are gone forever. I’ll be sleeping with my copy under the pillow tonight. [GeekSugar via CrunchGear]