Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 71: Iwata, The Switch, and NES Golf

Episode Date: October 6, 2017

Thanks to some industrious hackers, we've recently learned that a digital version of Golf for the NES has been secretly implanted into the firmware of every Nintendo Switch as a tribute to Satoru Iwata. But how was it discovered, how can you play it, and why did Nintendo choose Golf of all games? On this disturbingly relevant episode of Retronauts Micro, host Bob Mackey and guest Henry Gilbert answer all these questions and more.

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Every Tuesday for crime in sports. You can join us every Tuesday at podcast.1.com, the Podcast One app, or subscribe on all Apple products. Find us every Tuesday and laugh at people. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts a Micro. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackey. And today's topic is Sotora Iwata, the Switch, and NES Golf. And I think I fucked up his name already. But joining me today is golf enthusiasts, so long as it's digital, Henry Gilbert.

That's right. And today's episode is about some recent news from last week. about a fun little Easter egg on the switch. And I do want to say that this episode is going to be a bit shorter than the usual micros. And as I said before, the micros were only supposed to be like 10 to 15 minutes long. And now they've been an hour long. And I'm going to dial them back to take on smaller topics a bit. So some of them will be shorter.

Some of them will be longer. I just don't want anyone to think something is wrong or they download the wrong file. If they see this is only 15 minutes. But I bet after I say this, we will go for an hour. Yeah, don't promise 15 minutes before it's done. But yeah, I did want to say that something. pretty magical happened in that in hacking the

switch they found embedded in the switch's firmware a digital version of NES Golf and that is that was put there as a tribute to Iwada who was basically heading up development of the switch as he passed away in 2015 and go ahead

I know I just remember that he I look back on it now as it's kind of sad but when he announced the NX I felt that X, right. That was the actions of a man who knew his days were numbered that he would not see the switch's release, but he wanted to be the one who let the world know it was happening. Right. Right. And so he knew his days were number, which is... I want to say, in just in terms of corporate culture, I feel like, speaking broadly of a culture I know barely anything about, I feel like there are a lot of problems with the Japanese business culture. Absolutely. But one of the perks of it, I guess, when you're not working yourself to death, is the fact that someone like Iwada, could work his way up the chain of a business and in the unimaginable reality of someone

that's running the company that actually knows about the products would use the products and care about the products. My experience with corporate culture, being part of it and witnessing it through the news and stuff, often the CEO is a person who was installed. He was hired by another big company and that's why you came to this one. He just has been hired successively by big companies. He is not invested. He or she.

It's always a he. He is 99 times out of 100 Yes And they don't care about the product They want to make money And that's fine But it's so rare that you see

Someone at the top Actually care I mean The guy before Iwada didn't care that much No I mean He Yeah

And the guy after him doesn't He doesn't seem to care all that much Well he doesn't So yeah The guy who preceded him Yamauchi son Hiroshi Yanamuchi He was the last

of the family that had owned Nintendo, and he famously never played his games, like Nintendo games. I think he played the version of Go once or something. When forced to by Hank Rogers, yeah, Hank Rogers, but that he never played it, but then he chose to install out of all the business people, including his son-in-law, and by not installing him his son-in-law, quit Nintendo. There's a story there. There's a bigger story there. There is a big story there, I'm sure of. But anyway, when Yamuchi could have passed along to any people. And then he passed along to the nerd who was the best developer at Hal who was the guy they called in like, hey, this shit doesn't work. Can you, can you fix this thing? They gave it to that guy out of all the people they could give it to. And he was still working on games in his role as a CEO, very rarely, but he would still do things like I believe he was, was he, was he, was he, was he, was he, was he, was he, was he, was he, was he, was he, was he, was he, was he, he, was he, the special title.

I think it's president. Oh, yeah, I believe it was president. Yes, but in his role as president, I believe he did, quote, unquote, fix Smash Brothers Melee. He was sort of like the special operations team flown in to get that game out in December. Yeah, because Yamuchi stepped down in 2001, and he got, and that's when the game came out, too. Right, right. And that Awada, you can see the spirit of that in Awada, the Awada asks columns, which were

a major resource for a show like Retronauts as well, and for me in writing. Oh, for sure, yeah, even today. He was a big time game historian, and, yeah, that he made decisions. It was good. It was interesting that his decisions ended up making a lot of money anyway, but his decisions did seem more on like, this seems like a cool game or this is a creative expression. Like, it's not, obviously, it was his job to make money. And he made a shitload of money for Nintendo.

But he also knew what a gamer would want, what a Nintendo user would want based on his experience with video games, making them, playing them. And I don't want to throw the new guy under the bus. he is from Nintendo. He came from Nintendo. Yeah, he's not just the guy like flown in. And like in my experience, I did not work in the, I mean, I guess I worked in the games industry in some way. But in my experience, I've been at places where it's just like there's a new president every five months. They've done, they've not done anything like it before.

They'll be gone in another five months and another guy will take their place. And it's just like, it's so rare that you see this figure actually achieve that kind of a role at a company. Yeah. And it's something too that you see in the difference. I see that corporate culture expressed differently in, in, maybe this is all just me falling for the PR of the fun. You see games from Western publishers, the EAs, the Ubisofts, the Activisions that often feel like somebody checking a box on a, you know, on a spreadsheet in a meeting that just says, well, we could only make a Dead Space 3 if it is a loot-based online co-op game. Micro transactions, yeah. With microtransactions.

We can't do it any other way, which is a dumb-ass way to think, because, guess, what that game didn't make a lot of money and was not a success no it was not and meanwhile in japan i think sometimes definitely not always but you will end up with an executive level person being a creative person who there's problems with that in that a creative person is always the best manager either but they at least are like oh you succeeded in making this game we will give you more power as opposed to i feel in american game development on a mat at a major publisher level there's a very clear wall of like you are creative, you don't go

beyond this point and you don't get to make calls beyond that. Yeah, it's like if you were smart, why are you not a manager? Why are you not an executive? If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Is that classic Batman the animated series? Oh, that's a great episode. So yeah, we attack capitalism, it's just our main goal on retronauts. I do want to talk about how... That episode's all about game development,

remember? Oh, you're right. Yeah, he got screwed out of royalties or something. That really was a publisher saying that to Edward Nigma for making a video game. I forgot about that. So I do want to go over just like this is a very interesting detective story almost as to how people discovered this uh that the nes version of golf is hidden on the switch so uh a user of the gba temp console hacking forms named satary said and i quote i had this really odd experience with my switch that when i had left

and returned to it nes golf was on my screen i played it and i played it normally but it was night time for me so i wasn't thinking about the importance of this they they did not capture a screenshot or take a video, but just imagine walking to your Switch and there being a game you never bought on it just playing. On a system that has no virtual console. There's no way you can play any NES games, let alone one is random as golf, which is not particularly well remembered by anybody. I would assume my brain broke or something, like reality broke. Oh, I clearly have, I have clearly had a mental breakdown. I'm in a death dream right now. I have to play golf. So yeah, the Switch modding community previously discovered an NES emulator called Flog on the

hardware, FLO-G, golf backwards. So what happened was, there's a lot of really, really granular tech details that I don't think our listeners would want me to say, but you can definitely go online and read about them. So the hacking community figured it out. Basically, in order to play Nintendo's golf, you'd need to make Iwada's Nintendo direct hand gesture with the switch controllers on the day he... With the joycons specifically, yes. On the day he died, July 11th, in order to play the NES golf game.

Now, that's even trickier because the day he died was not the day that it was reported that he died. He died a few days before it was reported. Yes, yeah. It's, uh, that was something, his passing showed me how when a celebrity dies in America, we seemingly know it the second anyone knows. The corpse is still warm and we find out from TMZ. Or maybe in the case of like somebody who just lives a very private life that then they

can report on it, but like, we knew Carrie Fisher was dead immediately, but they make, they make, they make a real deal with Awada that they're like we had to inform everybody about this and even when I remember it was actually after Yamauchi's death people ask questions about it in like the stockholders asked in the meeting about hey he had all this stock what's it going to mean and one of the executives in it said this may be a cultural thing for Japan but we don't talk about his death until two months afterwards and we will not make reaction to that then and that also feels like a real cultural difference there and like America, it's just like, yeah, yeah, he's in the ground. Who fucking cares. What about his money? Where's his stocks? Start digging him up. So, yeah.

And actually, so there's also another tribute to Iwada in Breath of the Wild, I believe. There's a very Iwada, like, figure in the game. And just reading about that gave me goosebumps. I did not encounter him yet. I'd got to play more Breath of the Wild. So, yes, if you do the hand gestures that Iwada did in the Nintendo Direct videos on July 11th, it'll say the quote that he said when he would do those gestures. I don't know what it is in Japanese.

I forget what it is. Maybe Henry can find it. direct is how he'd say I don't know what it is in Japanese but yes Henry will find that but yes they made this really hard to find so not only did you have to do this on the day he died July 11th if you ever connected your

switch to the internet you actually have to wait until that day because of how it how it informs the internal clock if you didn't connect to the internet you can set the clock to July 11th and play Nintendo golf by doing the hand motions so yeah they really wanted this

to be hidden but you cannot hide anything anymore from any hacker. They will do it like a data dump and find every scrap of information you wanted to hide. They will find it immediately. They really will. It's, uh, man, it, well, you just see how much Nintendo, Nintendo loved every Nintendo employee loves Satoriawada. Oh, for sure.

Every, not just the Japanese employees, but every Nintendo of America employee I follow on Twitter or no, like they all had very personal stories of meeting Awana and saying wow down to earth he was and how like, uh, one of the United States. and how, like, one of my favorites, I forget the person who said it, but they worked in the localization side, and they say that they were at the Nintendo of America office, staying up late on, like, maybe even working on the weekend to translate this game, and they are wearing not business clothes, certainly not Japanese business clothes. And then he said he, like, turned a corner, and Iwada in business clothes comes out of the boardroom. and he's like, oh no, I look terrible. But then he said later, he saw Wada in the same kind of like scaled down clothes at a meeting at an American. That's awesome.

That's awesome to me here. I never actually met him in my time in the Games Press. Actually, I was in his presence. You're in a famous photo. Yes. At the unveiling of the Wii, the unveiling of the Wii U, Jeremy and I, so the Nintendo event happened. I think it was the last Nintendo event in E3. I'm pretty sure it was.

So the Nintendo event ended. I was there too at that, though. I didn't get there. I don't think I knew you then. No, no. So the event ended. led out into this little hallway full of, you know, we use all the new games that were coming out and Jeremy and I were just trying them out and taking videos. Little that we know, Iwada

and Miyamoto were like eight feet away and a picture was taken of him in front of us. I think Miyamoto was there too with I Wada in that photo. Totally. It's on my Facebook. I think the photo was for, you know, AP News or something or one of those things that every, that every newspaper uses for their photos. So anytime they're going to pull up one, they find Iwada and it's you and Jeremy. Yes. In the previous year, I was on the cover of the Wall Street Journal because I sat next to Anthony Parisi, who dressed up as Mario. So it's me, Anthony, and Janine Dong from former one-upers all together on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. And that was my one brush with real fame, I guess. Oh, that's amazing. So, Bob, I've noticed that, you know, living in Berkeley, California, you've become a real radical hippie type. That's true. And I don't have a lot of living space. My kitchen is a hallway with a stove in it, as I say.

Yeah. So I've noticed that while I gather a lot of games to, you know, chronicle and photograph, you believe that physical possessions are a burden. Yes, everything is transitory, Jeremy. It's what Buddha tells us. So I guess for gaming, you prefer not to own, but rather to rent, to acquire. That sounds like a great proposition. Is there a service that I could take advantage of? Well, Bob, as a matter of fact, there is. There is a service called Gamefly, the best way to buy and rent all your favorite games,

but you could just rent if you want. Okay, that's good. And you're saying, okay, so I get a game and I'm done with it, and then it's the mailman's problem, right? Pretty much. Good. I can't stand that guy. You don't have to possess.

You don't have to worry about the burden of physical possessions weighing you down. You have more than 9,000 titles to choose from, and I know that you don't have space in your home for 9,000 games. That is very true. I actually got the landlord to check that out for me, and there's only room for 8,000, and I don't want to break any building codes. Right. So, yeah, Gamefly lets you try your favorite games in movies before you buy,

if you ever want to buy them. I don't know if you ever would. And you can keep the games as long as you want, which is great for, you know, the big, meaty RPGs that you tend to enjoy. So do our listeners have some sort of incentive to use this fine service you call Gamefly? Why, yes, and as a matter of fact, they're offering Retronauts listeners a free premium 30-day trial by going to Gamefly.com slash Retronauts. It'll let you check out two games and war movies at a time, and it's only available by going to Gamefly.com slash Retronauts. My favorite thing about Sega's arcade games from the 80s is the crazy Super Scler technology we've talked about in this episode.

All those sprites flying out of the screen at you? The only thing more immersive is, well, real life. But if you want to zoom down the highway with trees and billboards streaking past like in a video game, you're going to need to buy a car. And for that, you're going to want to use Truecar. Truecar can connect you with a network of more than 13,000 dealers and give you a look at their actual inventory of more than 700,000 pre-owned vehicles. On top of that, once you register with True Car,

you can get a look at actual numbers on what people in your local market have paid for cars. That way, it's a cinch to see if the car you want is even a little. available for purchase and get a sense of its real market value and even read up on all the retailer incentives you have available. TrueCar will put you in touch with a local TrueCar certified dealer for a quick, easy buying experience. So far, TrueCar customers have saved an average of more than $3,000 off MSRP across more than 3 million cars sold. So when you're ready to buy, visit True Car to enjoy a more confident car buying experience. Some features not available in all states. So I did want to talk a tiny bit about golf. It is a

It is a fairly basic golf game along the lines of all of Nintendo's sports games of 1984, 1985. Like there was football, soccer, baseball. I think football was 10-yard fight. Well, most of them got named by the sport. Right, right. Ice hockey. Yeah, volleyball, soccer, things like that. And actually, I used Jeremy's golf video, his Good Intentions Golf Video, to do a bit of research on this.

And I was wondering that essentially all golf games are this from this point onwards. but Jeremy could not figure out who was the first person to invent the modern golf game which that means there's a meter involved the meter, the click click click of hitting the golf swing correctly like how do you express golf is

a very like precise game about swinging something perfectly with the right amount of strength like it's all it's why old men love it because it's slow and it's sit down a lot you get to drive around but so

but the expression of it and putting the directions and just the expression of what a hole looks like on a game screen. It was all pretty much pioneering in that one. Pretty much. I mean, Jeremy figured out that it was basically a lot of lateral thinking. And this is 1984. There was nothing kept from that era. So there are a lot of games from 84, maybe two or three, that have similar ideas.

Golf is the best version of that. And I should say, I think I'm bearing the lead here. Iwada worked on it. That's why it's part of this little hidden secret in the switch. And Iwada, again, he's a miracle man, and the miracle he performed on this game was fitting 18 holes onto one NES cart. On those early carts with no memory. I mean, they had to cut an entire stage of Donkey Kong just to get it out on the Famicom. That's insanity.

Yeah. Like, that is nuts to me. So who knows what he did, but he worked as magic. And I have to say, it is funny to go back, and I play this emulated, just to try it out because I hadn't played it in like 20 years. And right now I'm playing Everybody's Golf for the PS4. They finally changed Hotchats Golf back to Everybody's Golf. It's Japanese name. It had always, I think it had even been everybody's in Europe, too.

We were the only ones with Hot Shots. The Americans love those hot shots. Great movies, by the way. So, yeah, and I was playing Hot Shots Golf after that. Sorry, everybody's golf after that. I'm like, these are essentially the same games. I mean, you get the quality of life features you expect from a game made 30 years later, but I'm still doing the same kind of geometry slash meter stopping equation in my head every time I hit the ball.

So it's great that this is where it came from. And basically, all golf games have been this forever. And whenever anyone tries to think outside of this box, it's always, I never, I never like it. Like the Tiger Woods golf games I think are a bit different. I just never like them. Yeah, it makes sense in my brain to do it that way. I'm actually really excited. I haven't played it yet, but the just came out today on the switch is Golf Story, which is an indie team making their version of the handheld Camelot Mario Golf Games, which are RPGs.

Yes, and I hate, this is not retro talk, but I hate that they took that feature out of the games. Yeah. Whenever I would demo one of those games, golf or tennis, the first thing I would ask is, is this an RPG? Me too. And they would say, no. And I'd be like, I don't want to play this. Yeah, I was like, look, this tennis is fun. And these mini games are cute. But I want a Pokemon RPG. Those only got to be RPGs because Pokemon was so huge. Oh, you're right. Yeah, I never thought of that. It was very likely that they said, well, okay, we're making the handheld version of tennis. Pokemon's pretty big. And you guys at Camelot know how to make RPGs. So could you just making an RPG in Pokemon style? I'm hearing good things about golf story from Patrick Kleppick. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I hope they followed up with a tennis story.

I'm probably going to buy two golf games in one month. But back to this topic, not a lot more to it. I just wanted to make our listeners aware of it if in case you weren't. And the funniest thing is like, Nintendo is basically no comment on this. It's funny. Just like, can you at least admit this exists? We have proof. Just say, yes, it's a tribute to Iwada.

In 20 years, they'll say. Maybe there's a bit of superstition involved. Like, we could jinx this. I don't know what that would... Well, I did see that I couldn't find the word that he says for directing it, but I did see that Justin Epperson of 8-4 in the awesome 8-4 podcast. Oh, yes. Hello, if you're listening. He had a comment on this, the cultural thing of this tribute.

He said, this is two tweets from September 19th. In Japanese culture, Omamori, Omamori, are brought at shrines for various reasons. If you keep one close to you, it will protect you and give you good luck. So the idea is Nintendo Embedded Awada's game to watch over every unit, and that's fucking me up good right now. That man was love. So that is his, Justin. If you don't know Justin and don't listen to A4Play. He has lived in Japan a very long time.

He knows Japanese culture, so I believe this reading of it from him. Yeah, and I believe Omimori are those little, like, little tags you tie to things, and they all have different things written on them. So, yeah, this is just like the little tag inside of the thing. but what an amazing gesture from a giant corporation I'm doing the direct gesture yes I'm doing the direct gesture right now what an amazing gesture from a corporation

to put this work into something that they assume no one would see just like this this is like our former boss like living on through this console he spearheaded and guess what I think it worked I think this worked because I will say right here

I was a little wrong about the switch I was thinking what is the appeal of this it's basically just like a portable game system guess what I have got one now And I'm like, I was so stupid. This is great. Anytime a new game is announced, I'm like, but it's on Switch. Yes.

And when it's not, I'm like, oh. Yes. Yeah, I think the only thing I'd add to this is that, so golf, you know, was made by R&D2. So I'm guessing that was the, that's also the guys who make systems. So I can see the system architect dudes who were there then would be there now and be working on the Switch. Yeah, yeah, they would be around that long. And at the time, you Wada was at Howell, who were best buds with Nintendo, of course. but his first game was actually a port of joust.

Yes. So I assume golf is important to Nintendo for reasons that we're not entirely sure of. I mean, he's, of all the performing feats he's done, this is one of them. But I think he's done greater things than make this golf game work. Absolutely. Though, another interesting thing to golf is that it is tied to the Wii's launch as well. Yeah, that's right. Because Wii sports, the pack-in that sold a hundred million whys,

the golf in that game, every course is from NES golf. That's right, yeah. I'm sorry, not NES golf, from golf, yeah. The NES game. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, there was a tribute to this game back then. Maybe it was bigger in Japan. Maybe.

I mean, if it was a launch-ish game, well, no, if it's 84, then it was not a Japanese launch game because it was 83 for Famicom. So, but it was 84 in Japan, 85 in U.S. I think, yes. But, and also, though, it was another of those games that, like, had the cheat of, we gave this fat guy a mustache. We're not saying he's Mario. Yeah. We're not saying he's Mario.

I think a lot of that. The Mario cameos at the time were snuck past Miyamoto, like the punchout one was, which is why he so off model. He said that directly, like Ennio Takeda just drew Mario without his permission. And he's still mad about it. And also, um, with golf, they kind of remade it as a launch game R&D2 did for Game Boy. Right, right. I was just admiring the cover to that where they, they explicitly make it Mario. Like every game boy launch game, the cover art was like, oh, no, an alleyway, you're Mario in, in baseball, everyone's Mario.

And so in golf, when it's Mario, it's this weird shot of, like, Mario mid-swing, so you just see, like, his huge butt, and centered on it. I got to say the guy in the golf cover, the NES golf cover, is kind of like the New Donk City Mario. He's just tall and dumpy. He's just like, this is real-ist. This is Lou Albano playing golf. Super Lou Albano Golf Off. So, yes, thank you for listening, everybody. A little short burst of Retronauts News.

Hope you enjoyed it. Again, just a very, very touching thing from a giant heartless corporation that does not have to make these gestures. I don't think Nintendo's heartless. But, I mean, this is, they put extra work into this thing that no one would see and they saw it, which is fine. But I feel like what a great gesture. And it just shows you how important I wada was. And I hope as the years go on, we hear more stories about what he did for Nintendo because I know there's got to be like nine million anecdotes that are buried behind Japanese interviews are just not being told yet. They're going to come out over and over for years.

Every time there's a new interview about something, I feel like you'll, there's a high, about some Nintendo game, there's a high chance they'll say, oh, then I Wada fix this. or then Awada did this, or then Awada flew out all these people to make this happen or whatever. He'll just be the secret reason anything good happened in Nintendo. He is a miracle man. And actually, since we're doing an episode a day before it launches on Patreon, do you want to say another breaking news item, Mario is punching Yoshi in the back of the head in Super Mario World. We wondered about that in the classic Yoshi episode.

Yoshi Fumi Hino, I think, is... That is the name of the guy who drew it. That's not Yoshi's real thing. Right, right. Okay. I was actually, I stopped myself because I'm like, is the guy who invented Yoshi actually named Yoshi 2. I guess he is. Yoshifu Mejino, he confirmed in a Yoshi's Island interview, I believe. Yes. Well, so it hasn't been translated in English yet, but it was published by the Japanese Nintendo side. As I had said, on the retronauter recorded of Yoshi's Island, weeks and weeks ago, I hope they do new interviews for this to advertise the SNS Classic. And they did. They did it. And so it came out there. They also showed some original designs for Yoshi for a world. He looks dopier and like Big Bird almost. He looks like an emu in some of them. Like longer neck still has the dopey face. And kind of a sharp beak to him. Yeah. And that they said that it is, it was always

supposed to be a shell on his back, not a saddle. It's just the saddle. His shell became more saddle like. Yeah. Yeah. You can't ignore that. But yeah, in Nintendo's defense, they said that they originally thought that he was punching Yoshi. They originally conceived it as he punches Yoshi. And then he is surprised to, he's surprised by that and he sticks out his tongue. But then they felt very soon after like, oh, wait, people might not like that. So we all said Mario is pointing like, go, go in that direction, stick out your tongue. They didn't change the art of Mario punching Yoshi, but they said it's conceivably him pointing, even though there's no extended finger.

And again, though, Mario, like, Mario whipped Donkey Kong and kept him in a cage. So he's no stranger to animal. He's got a history of animal abuse. So, yes, those are some retronauts news bites for you. New news about old stuff. I've been your host for this one, Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo, of course. Talk to me there.

And my other podcast is Talking Simpsons every Wednesday. A brand new exploration of an old Simpsons episode in Chronological Order. And we have a Patreon to, Henry, tell people about the Patreon. Oh, yes. Well, the Patreon is patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, where we talk about the Simpsons. Every episode in Chronological Order. But we do a ton of extras on there. Interviews with people behind the scenes on the Simpsons.

Every episode of The Critic, we do it, give it the talking style. We do commentaries on classic cartoons of Simpsons. And also on the deleted scenes, we do so much stuff about The Simpsons that's all there for just starting at $5 a month to help support Bob and me doing Simpsons work full time on top of the Retronaut stuff, Bob also. That's right. And Retronauts has a Patreon too, which I should have mentioned first because this is Retronauts. I'm just so used to talking about the Talking Simpson's Patreon. But yes, Retronauts has a Patreon. It's Patreon.com slash Retronauts.

Basically, if you sign up at the $3 level, you get every episode a week ahead of time, add free and at a higher bit rate. And basically, it works like any podcast does. You put it into your MP3 player or podcast device, and we'll just download every week as normal. You don't have to go to patreon.com if you don't want to. You don't have to download another app. It just works like a normal podcast. So, yeah, check us out at patreon.com plus Retronauts. Everything that we do here is funded by that Patreon, and we really appreciate your support.

So, yes, thanks so much for listening. We'll be back on Monday with a brand new full-length episode. See you then. The Mueller Report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine, Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor

of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.