Touching Satoru Iwata Tribute Reportedly Removed From Nintendo Switch

Several months ago, hackers discovered that Nintendo had added a touching tribute to one of its legendary developers Satoru Iwata in the Switch. It came in the form of the NES Golf game that Iwata had developed on the 80s. However, it would seem that Nintendo had removed this particular part of the console with its latest 4.0 firmware update.

The folks over at Switchbrew.org noted how the update essentially made the game unable to start by gutting the code that was used for its launch. Designated as Flog (reverse for Golf), the hackers said that the code was replaced with garbage, thus removing the launch codes for the game.

As a result of this removal, the game can no longer be accessed by anyone, both through manipulation of the codes or by following the steps necessary to activate the game. The latter method involved emulating Iwata’s signature pose, as well, which made it clear to many fans that it was a tribute to the developer.

However, Nintendo had never officially acknowledged that this was the case. In fact, every time the company’s executives were asked about it, they would either refuse to comment or respond in vague terms, Kotaku reports.

In any case, it no longer matters of NES Golf was actually removed from the console. The fact that it could only be accessed via older Switch versions already made it inaccessible to a lot of people anyway. It’s also possible that Nintendo had never intended for the game to be accessed by anyone who was not intimately familiar with the creation of the console.

Perhaps this is just Nintendo putting the matter to rest as quietly as possible. At this point, whatever the company was planning with the feature might have been interrupted by overly inquisitive fans who, in their love for the console, were perhaps overeager in sharing the detail.