Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is both a loving celebration of the event's origins and a fun and exciting introduction to the world of speedrunning!

Considered one of the first esports events, the Nintendo World Championships toured America in 1990 in search of the ultimate gamer. While garnering huge media attention, it took the Japanese giants 25 years to revisit the concept with the 2015 and 2017 competitions. Looking to deviate from the traditional format, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition allows players worldwide to compete against one another in an array of speed run challenges. Will this new approach attract a broader audience and rejuvenate interest in competitive retro gaming?

Those familiar with Nintendo Switch Online’s retro consoles may be aware of a feature that permits you to manually rewind the game at any point. While this is a wonderful feature when used at the player's discretion, the automatic version of it in this game leaves much to be desired. Typically, a rewind will initiate upon death or when the mark for the challenge has been missed, to allow a second chance at completing it. While good in theory, there is no control over the amount of time that is rewound. Furthermore, the game simply drops you when it’s done, often resulting in another immediate ...

Nintendo does offer some replayability in the form of unlockable coins and dozens of unlockable profile icons. Some of these icons can get pricey, giving further incentive to keep practicing challenges and earning more coins. Like the games themselves, it feels like even with a lot here, there's still room for more.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition gives a number of Nintendo classics a new lease on life, but the overall package is a bit light on content. Those who live and breathe the Big N will enjoy this new take on the classics, but there’s not enough for more casual fans to enter the competition.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition lets players dip their toes into the world of speedrunning in an easy-to-digest package that celebrates one of the most iconic consoles of our time.

Nintendo World Championships is a fun introduction to competitive speedrunning with tons of nostalgia, even if its customization tools could be more robust.

It feels like it would fit better as an additional mode to some sort of NES Remix compilation. And that’s ignoring the fact that NES Remix 2 already had a mode based on the Nintendo World Championships. Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition is a celebration of the classic console; it’s just one that lacks excitement and is too exclusive for its own good.

“Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition will teach you the thrill of speedrunning, but it's only a tease.”

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is an interesting idea for a compilation, but it's hard to enjoy when so much of it reveals a game that blatantly feels rushed, be it in its weak online modes or the uneven spread of challenges with little variety. There are definitely nice challenges here to tackle that put up a good fight, and hints of clever inclusions like the Classified Information guides, but there's too little here at the moment to keep anyone hooked beyond a few hours at best. Sorry Nintendo, but this won't even get you the bronze.

To sum up, I do find Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition to be a fun distraction and a half-decent party game. Local multiplayer is obviously more exciting than playing alone but joining the weekly championships is fun too. The weekly challenges are engaging as is the Survival Mode. I just wish it included Red Racer too, or at the very least Tetris. If the game entices you purely for the NES nostalgia then you're golden, but if you are looking for a recreation of the 1990 championships then this isn't the title for you.

What is on offer in Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a delight. I don’t think it will make me any better at playing Nintendo’s old 8-bit games, but the challenges it presents are cleverly and cleanly designed. The collection lets me approach a small bunch of familiar NES classics from a new perspective, reinforcing just how timeless some of Nintendo’s earliest games are.