“This amazing guy came along and made a program for us that solved all our problems.”
Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon contain a wonderful tribute to the late Satoru Iwata, who served as the fourth president and CEO of Nintendo, and played an instrumental role in the development of Pokemon Gold and Silver.
As detailed by Serebii.net, when you travel to the Game Freak building in Heahea City and speak to Morimoto with a Pokemon you acquired from one of the Virtual Console games on your team, he will offer a bit of history about the game.
If you speak to him with someone on your team from Pokemon Silver, you will get the following response:
Boy, when we were told halfway through development to make Kanto, too… I thought I might just expire on the spot! But I’m glad we made it that way.
When we were having trouble fitting all the data in for Gold and Silver, and we were really in a pinch, this amazing guy came along and made a program for us that solved all our problems. He went on to become the amazing president of a real big company soon after that, too.
This isn’t the only recently discovered tribute to Iwata. Just a couple months ago, console hackers found that every Switch console contains a hidden NES emulator that serves as an amazing tribute to Nintendo’s fourth president.
Read IGN’s Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon review for our thoughts on the pair of new handheld titles, which will serve as the last Pokemon RPGs for the platform. While you’re at it, take a look at our comprehensive rundown of every new Pokemon in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, as well as our list of differences between the two versions.
Alex Osborn is a freelance writer for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @alexcosborn.