The Nintendo Switch has had a great year. In the past 12 months, we’ve seen the console go from shaky to steadfast with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild having won the award for 2017 Game of the Year. Though in that time we’ve also seen some strange things to come out of the Switch’s firmware such as classic NES Golf which was hidden within the system’s code and had multiplayer via Joy-con built in. That hidden gem has, now, been disappeared with one of the console’s latest updates.
Nicknamed “Flog,” (“golf” spelled backward) the game was never explained by the company as to why it had been developed, or more importantly, why it was found within the Switch’s code.
Now, version 4.0.0, which was released a few weeks ago, has completely removed all executable code for the game and instead replaced it with a whole lot of nonsense, according to Switchbrew.org:
“[[Flog]] was stubbed: official code for launching it was removed from [[qlaunch|the home menu]], and *all* code was overwritten with garbage. Thus, even attempts to launch it manually will result in [[Loader services|loader]] returning error 0xA09.”
It still remains to be seen why NES Golf was put on the console, or if anything is going to come of it. Its removal, however, could mean the end of an estranged testing period, or better still, a move to keep those who love chasing Nintendo’s code from spoiling their possible upcoming plans.