Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition - Review
I remember my time as a child, where my parents would let me rent a movie from our local Civic Video every weekend. One particular weekend the lady working the counter had a movie she knew I enjoyed behind the counter as she anticipated my arrival. That movie was The Wizard, starring Fred Savage. The movie introduced Super Mario Bros. 3 to the world, and also the concept of a localised competition where the best of the best in gaming on the NES would converge and compete against each other for cash prizes.
The first Nintendo World Championships occurred the following year and followed the concept introduced in The Wizard somewhat loosely. The idea behind the competition was to garner the most points between three games within a short time limit. Later competitions using this branding occurred in 2015 and 2017.
Fast forward to now, and Nintendo have seen fit to release Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. The concept of the competition has been overall tweaked to increase replayability, but the concept can be compared to NES Remix, although it does not feel as much of a complete package as the NES Remix games offered.
As a package, NWC offers a large number of speed-running challenges across 13 Nintendo published games from the NES library. These include games from the Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong and Zelda franchises, as well as one-shots like Balloon Fight and Kid Icarus. Each game begins with a simple challenge such as “collect the mushroom” in Super Mario Bros, and “complete a lap” in Excitebike. These beginning challenges take mere seconds to complete.
The challenges grow as you unlock more and more, until you are faced with a Legendary Challenge which more times than not allows you to complete a lengthy part of the game. As an example, the Legendary Challenge for Super Mario Bros. is to complete the whole game using the warp-pipes taking you to World 4 and World 8, specifically.
Most of the action takes place with side-by-side screens. The second screen is empty the first time you attempt a challenge, but every subsequent playthrough shows your best attempt at the challenge while you’re attempting to beat it. This proved to be a double-edge sword, as sometimes it was helpful in determining where I made mistakes and could improve, but also distracted me from what I was doing on my screen and stuffing up my run.
The challenges themselves are overall enjoyable, and there are over 150 challenges spread across the 13 games. With so many of them being completed in less than 20 seconds, and the longest challenge taking around 7 minutes, it only takes a few hours to explore everything the game has to offer in the single player mode.
There are also two online modes available which will prove to be the sole reason to return to the game. The first is World Championships mode. Similar to the Nintendo World Championships in 1990, this mode tasks you with getting your best time across five challenges. Each challenge can be repeated individually, so you do not have to attempt all five challenges every time.
At the end of the week, you get ranked across all players who’ve attempted the challenge, as well as where you ranked amongst people born the same year as you. The challenge I faced during my review time included challenges from Metroid, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong and Kid Icarus, so they do seem to offer a variety of play styles across the five challenges. I would have liked to see Nintendo offer the possibility of bringing new challenges or even new NES games to this mode, but that doesn’t seem to be on the cards.
This mode also allows you to view a replay of the highest ranked player in the world, which can give you an idea of how you can improve your own game. I was thankful that I could watch replays in this mode, as it is sorely lacking in the single player Speedrun mode.
The other online mode is called Survival Mode. Similar in concept to games like Pac-Man 99 and Super Mario Bros. 35, this mode puts you against 7 other opponents by downloading their attempts from the World Championships mode. This mode takes place over three challenges in random order. The first challenge is passed by finishing in the top 4 of the attempts, the second challenge is passed by finishing in the top 2, then the final challenge is a one-on-one match with you against the best downloaded replay. It can be extremely difficult to end up as the winner, but I found myself playing this mode over and over again.
With these two modes being online, it is worth noting that these are locked behind having a Nintendo Switch Online membership. If you find yourself not having a subscription, you’re basically relegated to the Speedrun mode, which is over in a matter of hours. It’s understandable that an online mode is locked behind an online subscription, but it is quite a large chunk of the game you won’t have access to.
There is also a Party Mode that can be played between up to eight players either on a single screen or by local wireless. It’s a bit of fun, but probably requires you to be around similarly minded people looking for a nostalgia hit as well. It is nice to have it as an option, though.
Other aspects of the game outside of the main game modes include a NES Manual style guide for each final challenge you face in each of the 13 games. You can earn pins for completing Achievement/Trophy style challenges, and you can earn coins through gameplay to unlock avatars for your online profile. Other than that, though, that’s about it.
The original Nintendo World Championships from 1990 had a focus on achieving a high score in a short amount of time. I’m not sure why, but NWC: NES Edition doesn’t follow in the footsteps of what came before. Still, it is quite fun in short bursts, and I can see myself coming back once a week to see how I ranked among people around the world, and the inclusion of comparisons against people my own age is novel. If you are looking for something that resembles NES Remix, you’re out of luck here. If you’re looking for a series of short challenges and want to try playing some classic NES games in an interesting and unique way, then this package will scratch that itch for sure.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by Nintendo
The Pros
A solid amount of variety between the 150 challenges.
Survival mode is stressful gaming at its best.
Weekly challenges will keep you coming back for more.
The Cons
Not a lot to the overall package for offline players.
Weekly challenges won’t bring new levels or games.
