Remember NES Remix on Wii U? We enjoyed it for what it was at the time, and now Nintendo has seen fit to return to similar terrain with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, a game that aims to put you in the shoes of a competitor at the World Championships of Nintendo!
Ok, so maybe we’re forcing the excitement just a little bit here, it’s actually pretty hard to work too hard for another compilation of little challenges cut from ancient 8-bit games that we’ve already blasted many times before, but hey, here we are, and you know what? We’re actually enjoying ourselves a lot more than we thought we would.
Yes, this collection of 13 Nintendo classics is broken up into small playable challenges and features the likes of Super Mario Bros. 1-3, Kirby’s Adventure, Excitebike (this writer’s all-time favorite), Ice Climber, Kid Icarus and, of course. , Zelda and Metroid also make the cut. At first glance, it’s all very NES Remix. However, there is actually a lot here less in terms of diversity in terms of objectives and the ways in which challenges are met.
At its core, and as we’ve already detailed in our extensive hands-on preview, this game is all about speed. Speed your way to the objectives as fast as possible. You get a point on your final time and you win by being the fastest and challenge scale from easy difficulty to that Master. Simple. If this sort of thing stresses you out, well, prepare to be stressed, we think.
We spent a lot of time in the offline Speedrun mode before the game’s servers went live on launch week, and it’s basically a practice ground where you can run any challenge over and over as much as you want. Grabbing your first Super Mushroom, grabbing part of a level and grabbing the pillar, smashing some Octorok, landing some sweet jumps…no matter what the actual challenge is — and there are 150 to try — it’s good old-fashioned speed that comes first.
There’s no doubt about it, it feels like a downgrade at first, and as mentioned in our preview, the older games here haven’t had any visual tweaks or tweaks like they did for the NES Remix. However, with the reduced price involved, and having spent some time in the main online modes (World Championship and Survival), our opinions have gone from underwhelming to extreme to actually having a pretty good time, thank you very much.
Why? Well, once you get into the groove, once you start competing, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition flies by and becomes something we can see ourselves continuing to dive into for the refreshed challenges that make up the two main game modes. The World Championship rotates its five challenges on a weekly basis, giving you a variety of Normal, Hard and Master challenges to try. Your times then go on the leaderboards, with overall ranking and ranking by year of birth.
Survival mode, group selection, gives you two leagues, silver and gold, to try out, overcoming three challenges against the ghost time of other players and trying to come out on top runners to avoid elimination in three rounds. Again, it’s all very simple, but the agility and immediacy of the online aspects make it something that’s hard to put down once you get into that mindset of shaving off more and more seconds, or milliseconds when it gets real, from your performance. It becomes hypnotic, which is all we can really ask for. It’s also the kind of thing that’s going to get incredibly more competitive as players join in, and we’re now looking forward to the floodgates opening so we can hit you all. Yes, this is a direct challenge.
Of course, there’s also a party mode for local co-op that supports up to eight people, and speed is again key, this time going through the same challenges but in themed packs and so on. We’re not going to sit here and say this is an ultra-generous package – it really isn’t – and each mod is more of the same cut in a different way. It looks great, the menus are super responsive, it works online as expected, and everything works flawlessly in the handheld, but it’s still just bite-sized samples of some very old games, without many changes or surprises. Of course, more effort could have been made in this regard.
What pushed us into more positive territory in the end has been the joy of witnessing younger gamers trying out NES games for the first time. If you have kids or are playing with young or new players, it’s a real blast to watch them try to come to terms with how slow and complicated these old beauties are. It’s also a very nice way to educate people on shorthand about some absolute pointers of all time through this very quick history of highlights. Once you’ve mastered all of these challenges and cracked the global leaderboards, you’ll know everything there is to know about the game feel of some very important markers along the path of video game history.
You’ll no longer have to wonder what it feels like to fall all the way down a long vertical corridor in Metroid after you’ve carefully fallen all the way to the top (spoiler: it feels annoying), and really, doesn’t it? worth the entry price alone, not interested in all your weekly challenges and trophies?
Finally, we also like the collecting and customizing aspect of things here. Nintendo knows we’re all massive fanatics about these things, the profile icons and nametags that celebrate various achievements, and they’ve put together a whole bunch of collectibles to climb from each of the 13 games available via coins earned through the game. No paying for add-ons, no messing around, just playing the game, getting good and earning some coins. Good things.
And so, in the end, for your $25, it’s a pretty simple deal. No surprises or upgrades, just a bunch of classic Nintendo games cut into iconic sections to flash and then rinse and repeat until you’ve squeezed every last nanosecond out of the thing. A party night staple? We think so, even if it would have been better with a little more effort to surprise us all.
CONCLUSION
Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition doesn’t make a good first impression. It’s a downgrade in many ways to the NES Remix, and there’s not as much variety or effort to the challenges, nor any graphical changes to speak of this time around. However, stick with it, get into the competitive mindset and start collecting all the best pins, icons and ranked times on offer, and you might find yourself thoroughly entertained. It’s a small thing, just focused on speed, but we expect this will suit a lot of people who want a competitive outlet to show off their old-school skills. And hey, it also doubles as a useful history of some iconic Nintendo game moments and mechanics.