NES game Golf on Switch will be playable on the anniversary of Nintendo director Satoru Iwata

The NES game Golf, which is included in the Nintendo Switch firmware, is believed to be a tribute to former Nintendo director Satoru Iwata. The game would be playable on his death anniversary, July 11, by moving the Joy-Cons in a certain way.

That’s what it says on the page on Switchbrew, where information about the game’s presence previously appeared. Developer yellows8, who discovered the game in the firmware, states that the game can only be activated on July 11. Manually adjusting the date only works on Switch consoles that have never been connected to the internet before. On Twitter state a video of the game working on the Switch.

To start the game on the anniversary of Satoru Iwata’s death, players must make a move with the Joy-Cons from the main menu. It’s a signature move that the Nintendo president made common at the beginning of his Direct presentations.

Nintendo itself has never released anything about the presence of the NES emulator and the game Golf. A few months ago it was already discovered that there is an emulator on the Switch and at the beginning of this week it turned out that the corresponding game Golf from 1984 is also on the console.

Satoru Iwata passed away in 2015 at the age of 55 from cancer. The CEO led the company since 2002 and was responsible for the release of the DS and the Wii, among other things. He had a background as a video game programmer and was involved in virtually every major Nintendo title during the 1980s.

Update: Da_Maniac comments in comment that Satoru Iwata was a driving force behind the game. Nintendo had already asked other developers to make a golf game, but they refused because they didn’t believe the necessary data would fit on a cartridge. Iwata created his own compression method to make the game possible.