Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is an Any% speedrun through memory lane

Competitive gaming in 2024 is nothing new. Esports can be found anywhere on Twitch and YouTube. One can't throw a proverbial rock without hitting a gaming tournament. This wasn't always the case. In the early 1990s, the Nintendo World Championships was a unicorn. It was a one-time-only phenomenon where top players competed to be the absolute best. It was a special moment in time and while Nintendo can't re-create that initial rush, it can certainly try to keep that spirit alive with a time capsule of competitive challenges across the NES library. That's the idea behind Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition and Shacknews recently got an opportunity to give it a look.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a series of short challenges that stretch across the first-party Nintendo Entertainment System library. These are games that some Nintendo users may remember from previous collections like NES Remix, featuring games like the original Super Mario Bros. Trilogy, the first two Legend of Zelda games, the first Metroid, Excitebike, and several others. The idea isn't to play these classics as they were designed, but rather try to complete speedrunning challenges constructed specifically for these games.

Each of this collection's 13 games start with a simple first challenge, such as Super Mario Bros. tasking Mario to collect a Super Mushroom and The Legend of Zelda asking Link to grab his sword. Completing challenges will unlock in-game currency, which can be used to unlock more difficult challenges. A Super Mario Bros. 2 player, for example, will start by going through the first door in Level 1-1, but a later challenge will have them run through 4-1 and grab the rocket at the end of the stage's first stretch. Times are collected for a worldwide leaderboard, but they're also what will primarily drive Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition for years to come.

Survival Mode will pit players in a rotating series of back-to-back challenges against the world. This isn't an online mode, but rather a solo player racing against ghost data collected from the active player base. With that ghost data floating around, Survival Mode can thrive for a long time, especially as anyone who plays it continues to feed the machine. A competitor's success here will often be determined by what random order the challenges are played in. I tried the Silver and Gold challenges several times and finished Top 4 in most instances. That is, until I hit a pesky Kirby's Adventure challenge that involved copying a Fire ability. If that specific trial came up first, I'd be a first-round out.

Those interested in using Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition as more of a bonding activity can dive into local multiplayer with Party Mode. Those with enough Joy-Cons and Pro Controllers can connect to a single Switch and compete in a string of challenges to see who's left standing. These sessions can get surprisingly tense, especially as failure or death will rewind your playthrough several seconds and cost you precious time. Sadly, this is a local-only feature, so don't expect to push yourself against a friend in a different part of the world.

While there wasn't enough time in this session to check out the Legend Challenges, those await players at the end of every game's string of objectives. These are longer tasks, some of which can last up to ten minutes. They'll be something along the lines of finishing the complete Super Mario Bros. game with warp zones or completing the first three stages of Donkey Kong.

The last thing to note is that Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is all about sportsmanship. Cheating is not allowed here, so break the rules and watch your playthrough get rewound back a few seconds for a violation. These broken rules can vary across different games, but I saw this idea in action when I tried to race through Super Mario Bros. 1-1 and attempted to take a warp pipe, an action that wasn't allowed.

Players old and new will find Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition to be a test of their skills. Get ready to put up your best time when it releases on Thursday, July 18.

This preview is based on an on-site Nintendo Switch demo from a press event in San Francisco, CA. It may not be representative of the final product. Flight and transportation were provided.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?