General

• Changed it so that when returning a high ball, if you press the Flat shot button twice, it produces a Star Shot even if there is no Star Point there.

  • Note: In Ver. 1.1.0, the situation above would result in a Powerful Flat.

• Fixed a bug where Amps placed with the Amp Racket disappear before 12 seconds pass.

First things first:

• Game cartridges that contain the game data are, of course, better in every respect!
• I wish there were no game key cards, but only game cartridges containing the whole game!
• I know I’ll get downvoted to the centre of the earth for trying to mention a positive aspect of GKC ;)

I’d just like to point out a little feature that’s often overlooked, which means that in the event of server outages or the apocalypse, you can still install the games using GKC , whereas you can’t with purely digital game purchases.

Standard Game Cards: Just plug it in and everything works. The game is on the card, and so is the key. Works offline.

Digital purchases: The key is stored on the server. It’s not possible to completely reinstall games that weren’t already on the Switch unless the Virtual Game Card had already been inserted whilst the servers were still online.

GKC: The key is stored offline on the card. No online licence verification is required. You can also easily download the game data from anyone else who has the game on their Switch, without needing a server or an internet connection. Directly below the option to update the game is the option ‘Synchronise Version with local users’. This allows you to set up a Wi-Fi group and download the game data from other Nintendo Switch consoles.

Of course, the major drawback is that you need to know someone who still has the relevant game data on their Switch or SD card so that you can download it from them. However, should the servers go offline at some point, there will certainly be groups or meet-ups organised to download games.

Incidentally, this can also help owners of cards containing game data. Example:

The card contains version 1.0. Over time, the game receives updates and eventually reaches version 1.5. The servers are offline, and you might want to reinstall the game at some point; you do this using your Game Card and end up with version 1.0 installed on your Switch again. All games are backwards compatible when it comes to save files. However, some games cannot load a save file from version 1.5 into the game running version 1.0. In that case, it helps to download the latest version locally via Wi-Fi from another Switch user. Because the game cards usually don’t contain the most recent version of the game, which is the one you may have created your latest save file on

Of course, genuine Game Cards are better in every respect. But the feature that allows you to download game data directly from other Switch users rather than from Nintendo’s servers is somehow often overlooked, and in this particular case, the GKC’s ability to carry out licence verification without using Nintendo’s servers can certainly be useful.

TL;DR: You can download data from Switch games onto other Switch consoles without needing to use Nintendo’s servers (Synchronise Version with local users). The GKC then handles the offline licence check for this.