Nintendo World Championship Review: NES Version (Switch)
Miss NES Remix on the Wii U? We loved it for what it was, and now Nintendo has seen fit to return to the same with Nintendo World Championship: NES VersionA game that aims to put you in the role of an athlete participating in the Nintendo World Championships!
Okay, maybe we’re trying to get a little excited here, it’s actually pretty hard to get too excited about a compilation of little challenges cut from old 8-bit games we’ve played through so many times before, but hey, here we are, and you know what? We’re actually enjoying it more than we thought we would.
Yes, this collection of 13 classic Nintendo games is broken down into playable mini-challenges and features like Super Mario Brothers 1-3, Kirby’s Adventure, Excite Bike (always a favorite of this writer), Ice climber, Icarus the boyand of course, Zelda And Metroid also cut. In fact, it’s all NES Remix. However, there’s actually a lot here less than diversity in terms of goals and approaches to challenges.
In essence, and as we have detailed in our extended hands-on previewThis game is all about speed. Speed through the objectives as fast as you can. You get points at the end and win by being the fastest, and the challenges increase from easy to mastery. Simple. If that kind of thing stresses you out, then we guess you should prepare to be stressed out.
We spent a long time in the offline Speedrun mode before the game’s servers went live during launch week, and it’s essentially a practice run where you can run every challenge as many times as you want. Get the first Super Mushroom, dash across a section of the stage and grab a pole, smash some Octoroks, pull off some fancy jumps… no matter what the current challenge is—and there are 150 of them to try—old-fashioned speedrunning is the way to go.
There’s no doubt that it initially felt like a downgrade, and as we mentioned in our preview, the older games here don’t get any visual tweaks or tweaks like they did with NES Remix. However, with the price cut and having now spent some time with the main online modes (World Championship and Survival), our opinion has gone from being extremely confused to actually having a pretty good time, thank you very much.
Why? Well, once you get into the swing of things, once you start competing, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition shifts gears and becomes something we can see ourselves continuing to dive into with the fresh challenges that make up the game’s two main modes. World Championships rotates its five challenges weekly, giving you a mix of Normal, Hard, and Master challenges to attempt. Your times are then entered into a leaderboard, with an overall ranking and a ranking based on your birth year.
Survival mode, the best option, gives you two leagues, Silver and Gold, to compete in, running through three challenges against other players’ ghost times and trying to be the fastest to avoid elimination in three rounds. Again, it’s all very simple, but the smoothness and immediacy of the online aspects makes it hard to ignore when you’re in the mood to shave more seconds or milliseconds off your performance when things get real. It’s hypnotic, which is all we can really ask for. It’s also the kind of thing that becomes a lot more competitive as players get involved, and now we’re looking forward to the gates opening so we can beat you all. Yes, that’s a live challenge.
Of course, there’s also a local co-op party mode that supports up to eight players, and speed is the watchword again, this time through the same challenges but in themed packs, etc. We’re not going to sit here and say this is an incredibly generous package—it’s not—and each mode is similar in its own way. It looks good, the menus are super responsive, online works as expected, and it all works perfectly on handheld, but it’s still just a small sample of some very old games, without much in the way of tweaks or surprises. There could definitely be more work done in this regard.
Which brings us finally to more positive territory, and that’s the joy of seeing young gamers try out an NES game for the first time. If you have kids or are playing with young or new gamers, it’s great to see them try to get used to how slow and difficult these old beauties are. It’s also a great way to educate people about some of the absolute best players of all time through a very quick history of these highlights. Once you’ve mastered all of these challenges and scaled the global leaderboards, you’ll know everything there is to know about what it was like to play some of the most important milestones in gaming history.
You’ll no longer have to wonder what it’s like to fall down a long vertical corridor in Metroid after carefully climbing to the top (spoiler: it feels very uncomfortable), and really, is that worth the price of admission, not to mention all your weekly challenges and trophies?
Finally, we also like the collectible and personalization aspect of things here. Nintendo knows we’re all suckers for these things, with profile icons and name tags celebrating various achievements, and they’ve amassed a bunch of collectibles to collect from each of the 13 games available through coins earned as you play. No paying for extras, no messing around, just play the game, get good, and earn some coins. Great stuff.
And so, in the end, for your $25, this is a pretty simple deal. No surprises or improvements, just a bunch of cool classic Nintendo games cut into iconic chunks so you can play through them and then rinse and repeat until you’ve squeezed out every last nanosecond of gameplay. A party staple? We suppose so, even if it could have done a little better to surprise us all.
Conclusion
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition doesn’t make a great first impression. In many ways, it’s a downgrade from NES Remix, and there’s not much variety or effort put into the challenges, nor are there any graphical tweaks worth mentioning this time around. Stick around, though, get into the competitive mindset, and start collecting all the pins, icons, and top times on offer, and you might find yourself thoroughly entertained. It’s a small thing, all about speed, but we hope it will appeal to a lot of people who want a competitive outlet to show off their old skills. And hey, it also doubles as a handy history of some of Nintendo’s most iconic gaming moments and mechanics.
