Nintendo Switch Sports’ free golf update arrives next week

Nintendo Switch Sports‘ long-promised golf update arrives next week, Nintendo has confirmed.

The free DLC, which adds golf to the game on top of the existing six sports already featured, will be released on November 28.

According to Nintendo, the mode will include 21 holes taken from the Wii Sports series.

As well as standard local play, golf will include a new online multiplayer mode called Survival Golf.

In this mode, up to eight players take part online, all hitting their shots at the same time. Whoever clears the hole in the most strokes is eliminated, and this continues until only one player is left.

Golf has featured in all three previous Wii Sports games – the original on Wii, its sequel Wii Sports Resort and its Wii U remaster Wii Sports Club.

Wii Sports contained nine holes, all of which were based on the holes from the original NES version of Golf, which was programmed by Satoru Iwata.

Following Iwata’s death, the NES version was hidden in early Switch firmware and could only be unlocked with an elaborate sequence. This was removed in December 2017.

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Although Nintendo has never given an official statement on why the game was present and why it was subsequently removed, the most commonly accept theory is that it was an ‘omamori’, a Japanese good luck charm that’s never supposed to be opened.

It’s customary for omamori to be burned at the end of the year to provide a fresh start for the next year, which may be why the hidden game was removed when it was.