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OTTAWA — The Bank of Canada has placed an Easter egg on its website promoting the new $10 bill.

If visitors to the website enter the right series of keys, it plays the national anthem and fills the screen with a shower of tiny animated banknotes.

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The central bank unveiled the design for the new $10 bank note last week to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation.

The key sequence to unlock the secret is known as the Konami code because it was first included in many games for the Nintendo Entertainment System by the Japanese company of the same name in the late 80s. The code was most famously used in Contra to give the player 30 lives instead of the standard three.

The code is: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a.

“The Bank of Canada’s web team thought the Konami code was a fun way to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary of Confederation,” Bank of Canada spokeswoman Josianne Menard said.

Konami is now, with a few exceptions, mostly out of the business of video games and makes a large portion of its money producing slot machines and other gambling devices.

With files from Financial Post