Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Review

Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition is a well-crafted nostalgia trip, in the wake of the old NES Remix games, that taps into the competitive spirit of the Nintendo esports event launched more than 30 years ago. Despite being another collection of well-worn NES titles repackaged as a speedrunning minigame challenge, I can’t tell Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition down. My thumb (and my work deadlines) are suffering because of it.

Nintendo’s new collection includes 13 classic NES games, presented as a series of increasing challenges. The collection’s Speedrun mode is the main draw, featuring 150 trials spread across titles such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of ZeldaAND Donkey Kongin which players are asked to complete a short and sweet task – like picking the first mushroom Super Mario Bros.or completing a level in Ice climber – as soon as possible.

That might not sound too convincing on paper, but in practice, shaving tenths of a second off your best time is surprisingly intoxicating. While I was writing this sentence, I just played a special level in a Super Mario Bros. I challenge another 12 times, eventually dropping 0.13 seconds off my score. Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition it makes me feel like an honest-to-goodness runner without years of practice.

Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition it’s built for speed, as in how short some of the tasks are – one Super Mario Bros. 2 The challenge only takes 1.1 seconds to complete with an S rating – but how quickly these challenges load and reload. Fire up a jump and you only need to press two buttons to instantly restart a level. Only a handful of challenges last longer than a minute and generally involve trials spanning entire or multiple levels of a game.

World Championship mode attempts to revive the spirit of the original Nintendo World Championship competition on a global, internet-connected scale. Each week, players face five rotating challenges, ranging from normal difficulty to hard to master. This week’s challenges are from Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, MetroidAND Super Mario Bros. 2, and players have unlimited attempts to improve their time before the competition deadline. So far, I’ve only been competing with people who also have a pre-public copy of the game; obviously our results will pale in comparison to actual professional speed racers when they get their hands on it Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition.

Smartly, though, Nintendo has considered its audience: older millennials and Gen Xers who grew up on the NES. In addition to the world rankings for the World Championships, Nintendo will also release rankings by year of birth, meaning players will be able to compare their times and skills with players of a similar age who also have diminished reflexes and little free time.

Image: Nintendo

Players can also compete against other players using their “ghost data”—records of other players’ runs in various challenges—in survival mode. This mode uses a similar set of challenges from the World Championship mode and feels like an opportunity to earn some in-game trophies and coins to spend on cosmetic items, but otherwise there’s little.

Additionally, there is a party mode where up to eight players can compete locally on a single screen in themed challenges that vary in difficulty. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to play this mode to its full potential, but competing against my wife in speedrun-focused challenges has confirmed that she’d rather play Mario Kart 8 (or, more honestly, Sims 4 while I help her choose furniture stain treatments).

Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition it’s full of nice, nostalgic touches that reinforce its retro authenticity. It uses the Nintendo Power font treatment throughout the menus and even revives that magazine’s “Classified Information” tips and tricks section for in-game guides showing how to complete the collection’s toughest challenges. And in World Championship mode, the game overlays the sound of a cheering crowd on top of the in-game audio, giving you the feeling of competing in one of the Nintendo World Championship events that Nintendo has held over the decades.

Image: Nintendo

The biggest complaint I have Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition is its meager selection of games. The catalog only includes 13 NES games, all published by Nintendo, and is missing some notable 8-bit classics such as Punch Out!!, Dr. Mario, Donkey Kong Jr., and others that were part of the NES Remix and NES Classic Edition series. This small selection of games stands out, as Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition players are asked to select their favorite NES (or Famicom) game, a catalog that includes hundreds of titles. Hopefully, Nintendo will inject more NES classics and speed challenges to keep the collection feeling fresh over the coming months.

What is offered in Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition Its a pleasure. I don’t think it will make me any better at playing old 8-bit Nintendo games, but the challenges it presents are cleverly and cleanly designed. The collection allows me to approach a small group of well-known NES classics from a new perspective, reinforcing just how timeless some of Nintendo’s earliest games are.

Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition will be released on July 18th on Nintendo Switch. The game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a pre-release review code provided by Nintendo. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.