The Loop
Nintendo hid a secret version of “Golf” on the Switch. Here’s how to unlock it
Oh Nintendo, eternal purveyors of childlike euphoria and public-GameStop-meltdown-inducing supply shortages, we here at The Loop see your latest winking, willfully obtuse little trick and we applaud you. Why? Because thanks to a few enterprising nerds—the fuel upon which this world runs, btw—we now know that embedded within the firmware of each Nintendo Switch, lies an honest-to-goodness version of the brand’s iconic 1984 links sim, Golf.
Supposedly a tribute to Nintendo’s late president and symbolic soul, Satoru Iwata, who helped to program the game back when Russia was still called the Soviet Union and Purple Rain was the biggest record on earth, this secret Golf easter egg—per Nintendo SOP—is not exactly easy to unlock, however.
In fact, if you already have a Switch, it’s very likely you can't. Ever.
You see, the first step toward accessing this digital "omamori”—Japanese charms that are believed to bring luck and safety to their owners—is to set your console’s date to July 11th, the day of Iwata’s death. You can only reset your Switch’s date if it has never been connected to the internet, however, meaning that the proverbial, pixelated scorecard has probably already been signed by most applicable and/or interested parties.
If by some stroke of good fortune, your Switch still resides in its box, though, just plug it in, set the date to July 11th, head over to the homescreen and mimic Iwata’s trademark hand gesture with one half of the controller in each hand. If that sounds crazy to you, that’s because it is, but don’t worry, intrepid nostalgia fanatic, there’s a YouTube video to help (because there’s a YouTube video for everything):
Good luck and enjoy your rainy-day round, everybody.