Nintendo's secret tribute to Satoru Iwata hidden in Switch firmware

Members of the Switch Developer community have recently discovered a hidden Easter egg in the Nintendo Switch firmware known as "flog" (golf backwards). Present in all versions, if the current date is July 11th (Iwata's death-day) and you detach both joycons and make his "direct" gesture, it will launch the NES title Golf (with a little voice clip of Iwata speaking), which is playable by 2 people using the joycons.

1200px-Flog0.jpg



It must be noted that you cannot manually set the time to July 11th if your Switch has been connected to WiFi at ANY point, as the Easter egg goes by the network time, which does not relate to the system time as configurable by users. You may override this timestamp with homebrew/hacks, and has been proven to work consistently, but anyone on a newer firmware will not have access to this until they go public or wait until next year.


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Last edited by SonyUSA,

Ryccardo

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July 11, 1993 | McNair, James | Tribune Business News

At 51, Vince Perri has called himself a businessman for a long time. But it took fatherhood to help him find what could be the business of his life.

Perri is the brains behind a 3-year-old Miami company, Active Enterprises Ltd., that is offering a new game product for the 6 million Sega Genesis systems in the United States. His isn't just another addition to the hundreds of titles on store shelves. His product, Action 52, offers 52 games for the price of two.

An investment banker for six years, Perri has seen his share of business opportunities, good and bad. This time, the idea originated at home.
 

kingraa777

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i dont understand why it would be an Easter egg that only works if you haven't connected to the internet ??what would be the point of Nintendo doing an Easter egg that means so much respect that the majority of switch users wouldn't be able to access?? i mean common how forceful is the switch when it comes to connecting online ? VERY!!!! for updates and even to play online etc its really bad for it ,the switch deliberately makes it difficult not to press update, so i dont see even how this egg would even be releasable for Nintendo to the average user ??.
 

osaka35

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If it was exposed to WiFi it has network time stamped, it will not work. 2.3 means you have used it and thus it probably saw a public network at some point and probed it for time. It does work on 3.0 confirmed by the homebrew devs themselves by modifying the date with hacks.
What firmware does the new splatoon bundle come with? Surely not 1.0

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i dont understand why it would be an Easter egg that only works if you haven't connected to the internet ??what would be the point of Nintendo doing an Easter egg that means so much respect that the majority of switch users wouldn't be able to access?? i mean common how forceful is the switch when it comes to connecting online ? VERY!!!! for updates and even to play online etc its really bad for it ,the switch deliberately makes it difficult not to press update, so i dont see even how this egg would even be releasable for Nintendo to the average user ??.
...you'll be able to play it once a year, on the day he died. It's to remember the man who died and pay respect. That's the point.
 

sarkwalvein

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i dont understand why it would be an Easter egg that only works if you haven't connected to the internet ??
Please Understand.
It actually works both if you are connected or disconnected to the Internet.
The only thing it does is using the network time/date, AFAIK.
Before you connected for the first time, your Switch doesn't know the real date, but it synchs with the online date servers when connected.
After that it probably keeps track of the real date, even if you change the user configured date.
They do it like that to make sure you don't mess with the internal clock and trigger the easter egg on the wrong date.
After all, it seems it is meant for you to remember Iwata while playing Golf, in the real date of Iwata's passing.
PS: As long as you don't change the date options from "take it from the net", it should work on the real July 11th, even if disconnected from the net.
 

fedehda

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It was really funny this easter egg. I can assume everyone just swinged their arms randomly waiting for see something.

It is a nice touch from Nintendo paying respects to Iwata this way. I can't wait to next July 11th. I've already set it on my Google calendar and told my friends to get home that day.

By the way, Nintendo devs should already known that you can't hide too much on the code of any program, so why keeping it up on secret? No idea. Maybe they only wanted us to find out instead of any direct in a couple of years. Maybe we were too slow to find out in our search of homebrew. Who knows.
 

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