Nintendo Switch Online's NES Game Channel Has Already Been Hacked

The Nintendo Switch Online service made its debut earlier this week, bringing with it a library of [...]

By ComicBook.com Staff - September 20, 2018 08:58 pm EDT

The Nintendo Switch Online service made its debut earlier this week, bringing with it a library of accessible online NES games that anyone can enjoy. However, some hackers have taken it upon themselves to mess with this particular channel -- and have somehow added even more games into the mix.

It appears that the emulation software that runs these games is similar in nature to what makes the NES and SNES Classic Edition systems tick, so since hackers were able to get more games onto those quite easily, surprise! They've done the same for the online NES games.

For instance, based on this report from Polygon, a hacker by the name of Kapu has provided notes on how easy it is to get into the service, as you can see from the notes below.

good lord #NintendoSwitchOnline's NES games are plain .nes files
GUI appears to be entirely LUA much like the S/NES Classic so people are gonna be able to go to town on this

The "database" file that contains a listing of all valid games is plaintext,- pic.twitter.com/bO8M4B7U5e
— Kapu | the Gay. (@KapuccinoHeck) September 19, 2018

in theory you can easily add entirely new games and if both players were using the same file setup, could play online with them together.
Here's to hoping they didn't implement anticheat into it for whatever reason so us modders can enjoy official online games lol pic.twitter.com/L4e0BeSEsd
— Kapu | the Gay. (@KapuccinoHeck) September 19, 2018

also of note is that there don't appear to be patch files like what the 3DS and WiiU Virtual Console commonly had so you wouldn't need to do any sort of fancy modification to get them working online, this is in theory of course because CFW is broken on 6.0 meaning I can't test
— Kapu | the Gay. (@KapuccinoHeck) September 19, 2018

ok so
this is incredibly basic but it shows that fully custom games ARE possible!
hakchi for NES Nintendo Switch Online when?#NintendoSwitch #NintendoSwitchOnline #NES pic.twitter.com/OBYn3dLOtV
— Kapu | the Gay. (@KapuccinoHeck) September 19, 2018

However, Kapu made it clear that not everything could be hacked in players' favor.

Just to clarify, currently I have no idea how to properly modify the game cover art to make it fully legitimate.
This is the only obstacle to making them look entirely correct from what I can tell.
Hopefully some more interest sparks and people start to dig into it!
— Kapu | the Gay. (@KapuccinoHeck) September 19, 2018

Now, while some players may be tempted to try this, keep in mind that Nintendo is super-serious about keeping its games hack-free, so don't be surprised if it introduces a fix to the service to stop this. Kapu even noted, "Nintendo is very unpredictable when it comes to (checking on the app and banning users), so for now I would heavily advise against anyone else doing it." For those that need their classic gaming fix, hey, there's always the NES Classic and SNES Classic Editions.

Nintendo Switch Online is currently available, going anywhere between $3.99 for a month and $19.99 for a year.

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