Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition has brought out a competitive side of me that I rarely see in games. After all, I largely only play single-player titles, with the exception of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Call of Duty: Warzone over the past few years. But there’s something uniquely compelling about Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition.
As explained in a message from Nintendo when you boot up the game, this collection of classic NES titles is meant to throw back to the original Nintendo World Championships from the ’90s, especially considering, as the company notes, many of its fans likely weren’t even born then. (I certainly wasn’t.)
This means that you’re given various speedrunning tasks in both solo and multiplayer formats in the following 13 games:
Balloon Fight
Donkey Kong
Excitebike
Ice Climber
Kid Icarus
Kirby’s Adventure
Metroid
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
The Legend of Zelda
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
It’s a solid ‘Greatest Hits’ collection from the retro console to begin with, and the more than 150 ‘Challenge’ objectives really help flesh out each game.
For instance, early Super Mario Bros. Challenges might be to find the Super Mushroom or Collect All Coins in a room as fast as possible, while later ones involve quickly clearing the stage. Meanwhile, one Metroid task will have you ascending a series of platforms, while Kirby’s Adventure has some enemy-inhaling specific objectives. You’ll be awarded a grade based on how you fare and receive coins to spend on unlocking new Challenges and one of 501 player profile icons from all of the 13 games.
The best part of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is that these Challenges are bite-sized, which is a perfect way to encourage replayability. The art of speedrunning an entire game has never appealed to me (I’d be too stressed about making a mistake and ruining everything), but in Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, you’re generally only spending anywhere from five to 60 seconds at most, and it’ll even rewind (while adding seconds to your timer) if you die or pass the objective. This helps incentivize that “one more” mentality of wanting to beat your own score, especially with the second mini screen which shows a side-by-side playback of your previous run.
Naturally, this extends to local and online multiplayer, which supports up to eight people. First, there’s the World Championships mode with weekly rotating sets of Challenges to see how you compare against other global players, which, admittedly, didn’t appeal to me much. (I’d much rather have a permanently viewable leaderboard; the absence of one here feels like a particularly glaring omission.)
However, I really dug Survival Mode. This battle royale-esque mode has you facing off against the ghosts of seven other players in a series of three challenges, with the top 4 progressing to the second round and top 2 making it to the final. There’s an unmitigated thrill in easily placing first in the “reach the Super Mushroom” (Super Mario Bros.) and “defeat all enemies” (The Legend of Zelda) challenges only to have an intense race to the top in Metroid where I ultimately choked.
And while I’ve always had deep respect and admiration for these older games, you truly appreciate all of their little nuances when you’re playing short individual parts of them at a time, especially since they highlight different mechanics. For instance, you really get a feel for how Nintendo developers took elements like Samus’ missiles in Metroid and enemy-inhaling in Kirby’s Adventure to shake up platforming and exploration design pioneered in Mario and Zelda. Then, of course, you have the likes of Ice Climbers, Kid Icarus and Excitebike, which offer their own unique worlds and gimmicks.
That said, I do wish Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition had more in the way of extra features; it’s really just the aforementioned modes and an online profile creator. Given that it’s a celebration of Nintendo history, an in-game “museum” of sorts à la Trophies in Smash Bros. (which featured little bios on each character and the game they hail from) would have gone a long way.
Still, the 13 retro titles speak for themselves, especially through all of the well-thought-out Challenges that flesh them out. Whether you’re a lifelong gamer who grew up with these games or are only coming into them now, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a delightful package that provides an inviting sense of competition.
Nintendo World Championships NES Edition
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is now available on the Nintendo Switch for $39.99.
Image credit: Nintendo
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