Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Review: A Satisfying Speedrunner
The NES throwback offers fun in short bursts at a budget price.
In 1990, the first Nintendo World Championships were held, allowing players around the United States to compete for glory in various classic games released for the Nintendo Entertainment System. More than 30 years later, that concept has been revisited through Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. The new Nintendo Switch game keeps the spirit of competition alive in a budget priced package that tasks players with completing various challenges as quickly as possible. The result might not be as thrilling as competing on-stage against other players, but it should hold a lot of appeal for those that are passionate about the NES era.
How to Become a Speedrunner
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition features more than 150 challenges spanning 13 classic video games originally released for the console. That list includes several certifiable classics, including Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid. From the start, the challenges in Speedrun Mode start out relatively simple, with goals like getting the first Mushroom in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. as quickly as possible. However, the difficulty ramps up in the higher challenge levels, and the room for error quickly disappears. While the vast majority of these challenges can be completed in less than a minute, some of them can take significantly more time, such as the Legendary challenge for Super Mario Bros. 3.
After completing each challenge, the player is assigned a grade based on how quickly they pull it off, and awarded a number of coins decided by that performance. Those coins can then be used to unlock other eligible challenges as well as new avatar options. It's a very simple concept, but it works well, and players are awarded coins just for trying to break the records they established. Even if you're someone that isn't terribly familiar with how speedrunning works, it's easy to get into the groove and look for ways to shave your time down. Nintendo World Championships also shows players exactly how to complete each challenge ahead of time, so even those that are less familiar with these games shouldn't feel lost.
A Tribute to the Early Days
What Nintendo World Championships does best is that it feels like a true celebration of Nintendo's earliest era. The challenges can get pretty clever, and often serve as a reminder just how well designed these games are. Playing through Nintendo World Championships, I found myself falling back in love with Super Mario Bros. 2, and wanting to give Zelda II a second chance, having sold it off at a garage sale when I was far too young to appreciate it. Each player can also set a basic profile, which includes a Hype Tag, avatar, and favorite NES game. For the latter option, players can choose basically any game released for the NES or Famicom. Seeing the licensed games I grew up with like Darkwing Duck and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III included was a great touch, and made my own experience with the console feel legitimate, even if I wasn't always playing the "classics."
At this point, the graphics in many of these old NES games haven't aged quite as gracefully as those from the SNES era, but the presentation in Nintendo World Championships is still pretty impressive. The music is great, and the menus are sleek. There are also some nice touches, like cheering crowds during the game's online modes. The challenges seem to perfectly replicate the original games, so players will experience some slowdown in titles like Metroid or Kirby's Adventure, but that does keep the experience authentic.
If there's one area where the game stumbles a bit, it's the system for unlocking new challenges. For experienced players, it's not too tough to get an A or better on some of these challenges the first time around. To get enough coins to unlock a new challenge, I'd frequently find myself having to go back and earn my way up to an "A++" or "S" ranking. Being forced to replay these challenges when you want to move on to the next one can be a little frustrating, especially when it happens fairly frequently. Fortunately, a lot of players will have a slightly easier time with this aspect, as they'll also be able to earn coins in the World Championships and Survival Modes as well as Speedrun Mode. However, those modes (understandably) weren't live until shortly before review.
Challenging the World
World Championships and Survival Mode are the two online modes featured in Nintendo World Championships. World Championships is a mode where five challenges are selected weekly that players can compete in. From the time each challenge is live, players can try them out as many times as they want, trying to slice seconds off their time before the submission period ends. However, players have no idea how they're doing against the competition, or their current rank. Survival Mode also features different challenges grouped together weekly, but the player is competing against the ghost data of eight other people in Silver and Gold Divisions, and they can see video of these challenges as they try to keep from getting eliminated.
Nintendo has revisited the NES era in countless ways over the decades, from compilation titles, to frequent releases on Nintendo Switch Online. Some people might be sick of the system and its games at this point, but Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition manages to offer something that feels simultaneously familiar yet original. It also costs just $29.99, making it one of Nintendo's few budget priced first-party offerings on Switch. At that price, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition fits in nicely with Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain. Both are enjoyable, well made games that are fun to play in small bursts, but work better as the occasional distraction, as opposed to something you want to sit with for hours on end. In fact, following longer sessions, I'd often found my nerves somewhat shot. Still, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition has a lot to love, and it would be great to see a similar treatment for SNES and N64 in the future.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is set to release July 18th, exclusively on Nintendo Switch. A code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review, and it was reviewed on a Nintendo Switch OLED.
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