Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Review: “A Speedrunners Paradise”

Recently, Nintendo has made significant strides in making some of its retro titles readily available to today’s players, and Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is no exception. For those who may not recall, or were not yet born, the NES-centered Nintendo World Championships first occurred in 1990. This momentous event brought players together from all over and required its participants to compete in different challenges on the NES using a special Championship cartridge that contained customized minigames from some of Nintendo’s popular titles, like the Super Mario Bros. series.

Since these Championship cartridges are now some of the rarest and most valuable in the world, most of us will never have the luxury of experiencing what the participants in 1990 were able to. However, with the release of the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, Nintendo is giving players the chance to get as close to the experience as possible by allowing them to compete in several minigame challenges from popular NES games. Not only can players strive to beat their records, but they can also challenge their friends in local multiplayer or even attempt to make it to the top of the worldwide leaderboard.

Anyone Can Be A Speedrunner With This Release

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Does All It Can To Ensure That Even New Players Have A Chance To Become Pros

Speedrunning as a concept is often mixed among players with some feeling as though they don’t have the skill for it, while others have built an entire legacy showcasing ways to shortcut games. Thankfully, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition does a wonderful job at making speedrunning fun for everyone. Since the full NES games are not available within this game, all the games are divided into minigame challenges of varying intensity, making this a speedrunners’ paradise. As players earn coins by completing these challenges, they can then use those coins to unlock more challenges, and since the difficulty increases gradually, new players have plenty of time to get used to the controls.

Even after reaching some of the legendary challenges where well-known shortcuts from each game are utilized, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition uses displayed pointers as well as pre-game demonstrations to ensure nobody has the chance to miss it. These helpful features mean that players with no experience will have every bit of a chance that experienced players do at mastering these challenges on the first go around. Unfortunately, however, not all of Nintendo’s supportive features are as assistive as these, as there is one in particular that is far more hindering than helpful.

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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 death, until you are stuck in an endlessly frustrating loop in which starting over is the only option.

Controls Are Translated Well, But Not Entirely Seamless

Nintendo Does A Great Job At Transferring The NES’ Simple Controls, But The Experience Is Still Far From One To One

Given the NES’ rather simple controls, Nintendo has already displayed that they can properly translate them to the Switch with their Retro Online Consoles. While the same remains true with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, there are times when something still doesn’t feel quite right. Though the indicated controls are easy enough to understand, there appears to be a delay in the responsiveness. While the delay isn’t enough to affect what would be a normal playthrough of these retro games, it is a huge concern when it comes to challenges entirely based around speedrunning.

Game Selection Is Great, But Significant Missing Titles Don’t Go Unnoticed

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Offers Challenges From 13 Different Games, But There Was Room For More

With 13 different games to choose from, including some of Nintendo’s most notable titles, like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, there’s certainly not a poor selection. However, since the selection is still limited in quantity and several of the games are from the same franchise, the challenges can begin to feel repetitive once most have been completed. It just seems that Nintendo may have benefited from giving players a few more unique options, like Punch-Out!! or even Tetris, which was part of the original 1990 World Championship. Rather than occupying 3 of the 13 spots with games from the same franchise.

A Party Mode That Guarantees Fun For Everyone

With Shorter Play Times & Easier Mini-Games, Nintendo Offers Its Most Inclusive Party Game Mode Yet

Though party mode is not the sole focus of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, it might just be its best-selling feature. Aside from being inclusive skill-wise, the local co-op mode offers players the opportunity to have up to 8 players on screen at one time, which is a huge step up from the common 4-person maximum of many party games. Furthermore, players have the option of competing in themed challenge packs, in addition to individual mini-games. These packs consist of 3-5 different challenges where all players compete simultaneously and then points are distributed based on ranking.

This feature just further increases the fun and competitive nature that would otherwise be lost if playing on separate screens. Additionally, one of the traditional downsides to party games is that they typically have a minimum play time of half an hour, but in this case, most of the challenge packs range from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. So not only are more people getting to play, but games are ending quicker, preventing boredom and creating an environment where nobody has to feel left out. With Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, Nintendo may have just unintentionally dropped the latest must-play party game for everyone.

Final Thoughts & Rating

4/5 – “Excellent” By Screen Rant’s Review Metric

Whether it is through beating records, enjoying the chaotic party mode, or competing online for a chance to take the top spot in the World Championships, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition truly tugs on our nostalgia and brings back that childlike glee that many of us first felt when picking up one of these classic titles. To top it all off, players can purchase the digital edition for a shockingly great value at half the cost of a traditional first-party Nintendo game.

Meanwhile, for the average first-party game price, players can also opt to treat themselves with the Deluxe Edition, which includes the game, pins, art prints, and a decorative Gold-colored NES™ Game Pak, which is a considerably great deal as well. Either way, you can’t go wrong and this is bound to be a joyous addition to everyone’s collection.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition

Released

July 18, 2024

Genre(s)

Action , Platformer , Party Game , Racing

Multiplayer

Local Multiplayer , Online Multiplayer

ESRB

E for Everyone – Mild Fantasy Violence, In-Game Purchases

System

Nintendo

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