NES games are tough to revisit. They’re simple to find and play, but you can tell they’re senior, and they’ve been that way for a while. To play the original Legend of Zelda, for example, you have to play a difficult-to-master, often obtuse puzzle game whose importance to the industry is undeniable, but whose up-to-date fun factor is low. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition counters this with a strategy that WarioWare has employed to great effect since its inception: you play classic Nintendo games for exactly as long as they’re fun—which in 2024 is anywhere from three seconds to several minutes. The result is a game that lets you challenge yourself and experience the highlights of Nintendo’s ’80s library without much commitment, but it’s not without its annoyances.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition offers several modes, but they’re all built around Speedrun Mode. In it, you go through a series of challenges that, on the lowest levels, have you jumping around platforms in Ice Climbers, while on the highest levels, that might require you to run through an entire dungeon in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link as speedy as you can. Each of the 13 games has a few tiny challenges of varying difficulty. It’s here that I had the most fun, battling through a series of microgames based on series of titles that most people probably only know from their appearances in Super Smash Bros.
Successfully completing challenges rewards you with coins that can be used to unlock more challenges or avatar icons, but the unlock economy is frustrating. I always felt like I was collecting money to unlock the next challenge when I was getting an A++ and the occasional S. If you want to challenge yourself alone, you have to be doing exceptionally well to see everything, and that’s an unnecessary hindrance.
Fortunately, playing online rewards you with extra (and ultimately necessary) coins, and competing against other people’s high scores is a lot of fun. You’re not competing live, like in Super Mario Bros. 35 , but instead running through a collection of speedruns against the ghosts of other players. I like this approach because it lets you tackle challenges at your own pace as often as you want without having to worry about network connectivity.
The local multiplayer is a highlight, and I had a particularly enjoyable experience playing it with my kid, who understandably has no nostalgia for this era of Nintendo games. It bordered on educational, as she slowly began to appreciate what was great about these games, thanks to the bite-sized presentation that never felt too long in coming. The microgames are also varied and offer enough practice options that I was rarely an automatic winner just because I was senior. As a local party game for up to eight players, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition definitely succeeds with its speedy pace and nostalgia.
While it’s just a skeleton, I also like the presentation and explanation of what the Nintendo World Championships are and were. Nintendo understands that ideally most players who jump into the game haven’t seen what the 1989 Nintendo World Championships were like. Wizard and they probably don’t know that before esports there was this weird thing where people competed in single-player games. Those were different times.
I have my frustrations with the coin system for unlocking additional content in the game, and unfortunately most, if not all, of the games in the collection don’t stand the test of time. But as a way to celebrate Nintendo’s history, partake in nostalgia with local friends, and play classic games for as long as they’re fun, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition delivers on its promise.
