Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Review – Score 7.5/10

Back in 1990, Nintendo held the very first Nintendo World Championships, a video game competition that toured 29 American cities and captured the hearts of gamers young and old, nationwide. Now, fans have the opportunity to play like it’s 1990 once more, with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition.

The Nintendo Switch title boasts 156 speedrunning minigame trials from 13 beloved NES (and Famicom) games. To our delight, this collection includes the one and only original The Legend of Zelda, and its side-scrolling successor, The Adventure of Link. It should be noted that both instalments feature in this title as bite-sized chunks, but those who wish to play the long game can do so quite easily via Nintendo Switch Online.

 

The Set-Up

The download is complete and Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition flashes up on-screen. This whole design hits right in those 90s feels even though its pixels are much more polished. There’s the option of One Player and Party Mode, and the former is chosen. It’s time to experience the thrill of competition against players around the world! 

Nintendo wants to make this experience personal to you, so the player gets to set up a profile with their own Icon and Hype Tag, and they even get to pick their favorite NES/Famicom game. The system will also record your age which gets used in a cool feature that we’ll discuss later. Naturally, this reviewer chose a Zelda-themed icon and selected The Legend of Zelda as her favorite game to boot.

You’ll get the option to activate online features for this game, which will allow you to compete with other players from around the world. There are two elements involved: World Championships and Survival Mode. First and foremost, however, we’ll jump into Speedrun Mode, which allows you to practice challenges offline.

 

Time to Practice

Speedrun Mode lists the 13 titles available in Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. Alongside Zelda, there’s other classic games that retro fans will remember:

• Balloon Fight
• Donkey Kong
• Excitebike
• Ice Climber
• Kid Icarus
• Kirby’s Adventure
• Metroid
• Super Mario Bros.
• Super Mario Bros. 2
• Super Mario Bros. 3
• Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels
• The Legend of Zelda
• Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

All speedrun Challenges range in difficulty including Normal, Hard, and Master. Finally, Legend difficulty can be unlocked after completing all prior Challenges in your chosen title. With each Legend Challenge comes a Nintendo Power-inspired cheat-sheet known as “Classified Information” that can be used to guide you through the toughest of runs, which is super helpful for those who aren’t too familiar with routes. 

Each time you complete a Challenge, the system will rank and reward you. S-Tier is the highest rank, but those with A and B-Tier should still show their rankings with pride. With each success, the player earns coins that can be used to unlock the next Challenge or new Player Icons. If you rank really well, or fulfil certain conditions, you’ll earn themed pins for your hard work too. The Pin Collection in this game should strike a chord with trophy-hunters in particular, and I can only imagine how rewarding it would feel to collect them all.

The very first Challenge you’ll find comes in the form of Super Mario Bros. It’s short and sweet — a classic Challenge that requires you to grab the Super Mushroom that all Mario fans are familiar with. This player achieved a Personal Best of 00:06.90, which isn’t to be scoffed at according to the game’s scoring system. Either way, this tutorial-type section felt like the perfect introduction to how the game would be played. Once my learning experience was complete, I was free to choose a Challenge from any game on the roster, so naturally, I went straight for The Legend of Zelda.

 

Speeding Through Zelda

The Legend of Zelda boasts 15 Challenges in Speedrun Mode. The first is entitled “Don’t Go Alone” and is listed with Normal difficulty. Basically, the objective is to get the sword from the Old Man we’ve come to know and love. It’s hard to go wrong in something like this, so I managed to rank at S-Tier, with a Personal Best of 00:07:90. The game allowed me to watch a replay of my best achievement too, which meant I could see my “skills” in action, which is a pretty cool feature.

Each Challenge got a little harder and became more varied. While I had to fetch an item here, I would have to defeat enemies there, and finally, complete a dungeon under Legend difficulty. I won’t kid around and say I sailed through each Challenge without too much effort. There were a couple of times when I had to rinse and repeat over and over again, especially since I needed to build those coins up to unlock later Challenges. 

I did come across a bug in this game, wherein a trial called “A Secret to Everybody” required me to collect a Rupee. The objective is quite straightforward, and you do exactly what it says on the tin. Unfortunately, no matter what I did, the game did not register that I was collecting that Rupee! A simple restart on the Challenge resolved the issue, but the fact that this problem even existed is a little strange. Luckily, I didn’t come across something like this again.

The Adventure of Link also boasts 15 Challenges, and the first is entitled “Monster Slayer.” It’s listed at Normal Difficulty and the objective is to defeat three enemies. Try as I might, I could only achieve A-Tier on this one, with a Personal Best of 00:05:16. The replay of my attempt is a testament to my mediocrity in what some would say is the hardest of Zelda games.

Once again, each Challenge became more difficult. I definitely had a harder time with the Challenges in The Adventure of Link but my sense of achievement was dazzling by the time I’d completed the set. I still need to attain A-Tier in the Legend level and won’t rest until I get it.

I should note that while gameplay in Speedrun Mode is challenging in the beginning, it does become rather repetitive. At first, this didn’t impact my experience negatively, since I improved my time with almost every attempt. But the limited amount of such small trials does begin to wear thin once your margin for improvement narrows. The saving grace where this is concerned really is the Legend-level Challenge. Its size by comparison to those trials leading up to it broadens the scope for improvement rather vastly, meaning each run yielded more varied results, and therefore more (and sometimes less) satisfaction.

Playing Zelda in Speedrun Mode was good fun regardless of its repetitiveness, and it actually gave me a new appreciation for those earlier series instalments. While I have played them in their entirety before, I’ve never felt inspired to pick them up again. But now, I want to get good, and I think it’s the Challenges faced in Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition that make me feel this way.

 

Online Elements

World Championships is an online gameplay feature in this title which allows you to compete for world rankings. Each week, a new competition will become available with five Challenges from different games on the roster. The best times for Challenges you clear during the championships will be logged and you can replay Challenges as many times as you want. An hour after the championships end, world rankings and birth-year rankings will be announced, and you might just find yourself at the top of the list! 

You might notice that’s the second time I’ve mentioned something to do with birth year or age in this review. This is actually where a really neat part of the rankings comes in — the game will tell you where you ranked amongst players who were born in the same birth-year as you! Something about competing against 90s babies in the official world ranking makes me smile, but it also throws back to the age brackets seen in the live competitions from my year of birth, and that’s another nice nod to times gone by.

One thing to be aware of, now that you understand the basic principles of the World Championships, is that you aren’t actually competing against other players on a “live” basis. Instead, Nintendo will gather your speedrun data for comparison once the competition finishes, which also means you can’t actually see the leaderboard on which you’re competing. To add a little insult to that injury, you won’t be able to watch replays from champions of the leaderboard until after the weekly Challenge concludes. While the concept is still sound, this unfortunately takes something away from the experience of competing against others around the world.

This reviewer took part in Competition #3 of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. One of the Challenges was from The Legend of Zelda, called “Aquamentus Argumentus,” and the objective was to defeat the big boss. I managed to rank #24,031 out of 42,689 players, and my time stamped at 00:04:95, meaning I fell into the top 57% of challengers. Not too shabby, if you ask me! As for my birth-year ranking, I ranked at #882 out of 1,464 challengers, meaning I sat comfortably in the top 61% of players born in 1990. I’ll take that as a win and feel good about it. All-in-all, I found the World Championships to be a fun online element, even if I didn’t get the thrill of actually playing live against other competitors.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition also introduces Survival Mode, a feature that utilizes other players’ ghost data as competition. Basically, you’re taking part in a simulated race. You’ll pit yourself against seven other players and need to place in the top half of each round to claim victory. The player can enter either the Silver or Gold Division, however it seems as though the ghost data you’re up against is somewhat random. In fact, I wondered if there was an algorithm that would make it easier for me to win some races. Again, the fact that you’re not speedrunning against other competitors on a live basis makes this experience feel a little hollow.

 

Multiplayer Madness

Next up, this player explored Party Mode. The game offers local multiplayer for up to eight players where you can take on Challenges individually or in themed packs. This screams family fun, but unfortunately I don’t have eight people immediately available to come play Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition with me. Instead, I set up against one other person.

In Party Mode, players will have Profile Icons chosen via roulette, and I ended up with Bowser. I really would have liked to pick my own icon, and I’m a little confused as to why Nintendo didn’t make that an option. There is also a choice of game styles available here, and you can choose to play a Challenge Pack or to play one Challenge at a time. The former is recommended for newcomers and is themed-based, whereas the latter allows the player to choose from the entire list of Challenges.

Multiplayer Challenges are available in different levels of difficulty, including Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. As the packs become more challenging, you’ll also get more time to complete them. It’s the same concept for individually chosen Challenges too. Personally, I preferred choosing my own Challenges because it meant I was playing the games I was more interested in, instead of going through the motions of the other games. However, the fact that the packs exist is definitely a good thing for gamers who feel the need for difficulty-guiding.

As the more experienced player, I found myself doing rather well in Party Mode, but things began to get somewhat stale after about 30 minutes, and we ground to a halt. There’s plenty of potential here, however, if you do have the people available to get stuck into the competition with you. Party Mode, while valuable, would benefit from online co-op.

 

Everything Else

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition can be played in TV mode, Tabletop mode, and Handheld mode. I wanted to see how things played out in each mode by comparison and found very little difference in the experience. The only notable thing is that focusing on the small player window becomes more difficult on the Switch’s screen. Things are much easier to focus on if you’ve got your console in TV mode, and those pixels become more sight-friendly. However, if you’re stuck playing on the Switch, there’s options to make your own screen bigger in Survival Mode, and to hide your Personal Best Replay, which in turns makes the player screen bigger. 

As for controllers, I gave gameplay a whirl on both my Switch Joy-Cons and my Tears of the Kingdom-themed pro controller. Personally, I found using the Joy-Cons both in TV mode and other slightly frustrating. In the excitement of trying to go fast, I found myself mashing buttons accidentally, simply because they are built smaller and more closely positioned. 

This player focused on the Zelda element within Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition (as I’m sure you can tell). But there should be some mention to the other titles included on the roster. Games that would normally be quite intimidating to me, like Metroid, definitely felt less so in these smaller chunks. The Challenges were doable, and more than that, I could actually do better if I tried hard enough. As a Nintendo fan who didn’t get to experience the huge range of games on the Nintendo Entertainment System, I felt like the 13 games included in this title gave me plenty to chew on. Then again, I can appreciate that some classic Nintendo fans might be sorely missing a whole range of omitted games.

When all is said and done, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a solid title in the Switch library that delivers in terms of entertainment. It makes speedrunning less formidable to the more casual player, and chasing highscores can be highly satisfying. Online multiplayer seems like an obvious next-step that will widen this game’s audience further. While there’s enough content to please most players initially, there’s definitely room for improvement in terms of the game roster and available Challenges, but Nintendo have the opportunity to remedy things with DLC should they chose to do so. 

Does our review of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition inspire to you pick up the game and play it? If you’ve already got it, what are your best speedrunning times in Zelda Challenges? Let us know in the comments below.

Review copy of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition provided by Nintendo UK.