The 1989 film The Wizard had a profound effect on me as a child. In it, a young Fred Savage character makes his way to the Nintendo World Championships in, hell, I don’t even remember what city, but it was somewhere far away to test his video game skills. Anyway, once he gets there, the big twist in the event is that he’s competing in the then-unreleased Super Mario Bros. 3. had have Super Mario Bros. 3 the moment it came out after that, and God bless my mom, she bought it for me. She took it out of that white plastic K-Mart grocery bag and handed it to me – it wasn’t even my birthday or anything! – is a basic memory for me.
That’s what I think of when I think of the Nintendo World Championships, but for others, the actual competition was much more about that: a real-life competition. Now, Nintendo is putting a creative twist on nostalgia for its own history in a way that only they seem to be really good at: by turning it into a local and online multiplayer game for the Nintendo Switch, played in steps from less than two seconds. (this is not a joke) about a minute at most.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition includes 13 games: Super Mario Bros. 1-3, Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels, Zelda 1 and 2, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Donkey Kong, Ballon Fight, Excitebike, Ice Climber and Kirby’s Adventure. I ended up getting involved in each of them during a 90-minute hands-on session in both solo and local Party modes. I definitely knew what I was getting into – a collection of classic NES games from my childhood turned into competitive challenges – but I didn’t expect the format to be entertainment.
Of these games, Kirby’s Adventure was the only one I never played as a kid, and it was definitely Kirby’s challenges that tripped me up the most. But other than that, I had an absolute blast trying to get an S rating in the myriad of challenges offered for each game. They naturally get more difficult over time and you have to unlock the harder ones with coins that you get by getting a good rank in the challenges you have access to.
For example, the first challenge from The Legend of Zelda is so simple it probably sounds silly: you start from the beginning of the game and you have to go into the cave that’s on the very first screen and get the sword. And yet, I found myself replaying it multiple times to try and shave tenths of a second off my time to earn a pride-inflating S rating.
However, the party mode is where the fun really started. IGN’s Rebekah Valentine and I competed in a series of Party mode challenges against Nintendo representatives. We went through the world 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. 3. We got the first energy ball in Metroid. We climbed to the top of the first stage in Donkey Kong, took a bike around the track in Excitebike and more. Is it the perfect recreation of an in-person competition with hundreds if not thousands of people rooting for you? Definitely not. But it’s a wonderfully simple board game that really anyone can pick up and play. Does it help if you already have a nostalgic connection to these games? Undoubtedly. But is this experience necessary? Definitely not; in 2024, anyone can pick up and play any of these 80s classics quite easily, with only two buttons to worry about.
While we’re on the subject of buttons, my only real complaint about Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition has to do with them. See, when four of you are competing, all four of you have to press the A button to get ready before the event starts. the problem is, so many of games use the B button as a turbo or start button, which you naturally want to hold once the countdown timer reaches zero. But if any of you haven’t prepared yet and anyone else starts laying on the B button in anticipation of the event starting, everyone will return to the previous menu. This happened over and over during my 90-minute hands-on session, and I wasn’t the only one who accidentally did it. This seems like a UI design flaw for which there must be a workaround.
I have one other gripe, though this one is much less severe: the slowdown in Kirby’s Adventure (and possibly parts of other games that I haven’t seen enough to rule out). The versions of the 13 games included here are the original iterations, but during several of Kirby’s challenges, the slowdown kicked in and interfered with the action – as frame rate issues do in any game, modern or classic. I can understand the argument for keeping each of the games as they are, but for the competition that is at the heart of the game at the Nintendo World Championships, I’d rather it be wiped out. You may disagree, and that’s okay!
Meanwhile, I haven’t played the Online World Championships mode because of course the game isn’t out yet and there’s no one to play online with. But expect weekly leaderboards there with the possibility to watch replays of the best players – a useful tool for improving your own skills and strategies.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition feels right at $30 for the digital version, and I was once again surprised by how engaged I was with the seemingly simple challenges it presents (at least in the early rounds). I hope it goes well, as the title of this suggests we could get a SNES Edition, Nintendo 64 Edition, and dare I say it, even a GameCube Edition if this one is a hit.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive demo editor and host of both of IGN’s weekly Xbox shows, Podcast unlockedas well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham”, not “pork roll”. Discuss it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.