Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition review - It plays to be the best
Speedrunning is a part of the video game sphere that has grown exponentially in recent years. What started out as a niche slice of gaming has become a spectacle, drawing in millions of players and viewers, used as a tool to entertain often while raising money for good causes. It’s a test of skill not just in how you play a game, but how you can take apart a game and break it down into component parts.
I’ve dabbled with speedrunning myself, spending hours trying to shave seconds off my time for Super Mario Bros 2, a guilty pleasure of mine, or trying to learn the boost jumps in Celeste that transformed the whole experience, or even learning movement tech for Spelunky so I could finish the game in under eight minutes. A friend and I spent long weeks trying to break the two-hour mark for completing Resident Evil 5 in co-op, at one point.
So, when Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition (SNES edition when Nintendo?) came along, I knew I’d have to play it. Given that so many Nintendo games find themselves part of the speedrunning community, and offshoots of it like Kaizo running for Mario games, it makes sense that the Japanese developer is finally releasing a game that centres on the pastime. Essentially, this is Nintendo giving players a chance to speedrun portions of their classic games and chase medals attached to fast times.
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My feelings on this are mixed. On the one hand, it’s a great opportunity to showcase some classic NES games for a modern audience and have them take part in speedrunning contests. On the other, once it gets into the hands of actual speedrunners, the leaderboards are going to be a minefield. It’s going to be difficult getting your average gamer to care about the leaderboard for a Super Mario Bros 3 section if someone like MitchFlowerPower has already nuked the competition.
You can play in two ways, really. Either compete in ‘championships’ that collect several challenges together and you put in your fastest time against that of others, or you can play by yourself trying to set fast times.
Let’s start with the latter seeing as that’s where the core of the game lies. You start out by setting up an online profile for yourself, selecting a tag that describes your play style, your age, and opting for a lovely Nintendo icon from one of the many games included. With this done you’re shown a list of classic Nintendo games and a challenge.
The top of the list goes to Super Mario Bros and the initial challenge is to play the opening moments of level 1-1 and collect the mushroom hidden in the question mark block. It feels like everyone on the planet has done this before. You trundle along, dodge or bop the goomba, hit the block, and collect the mushroom. But can you do it quickly?
As I write this, my time stands at 04:96 and I scored an A+ for my time logged. You can retry right away if you believe you can beat the time and you’ll play with a second window off to the right showing you your performance from before, so you can really analyse where you lost time. From here the challenges increase in difficulty. The first ‘hard’ challenge is to complete the entirety of level 1-1 as fast as possible. I finished at 24:38 and ranked A++, just one rank off of the top S ranking.
This is where you’ll spend most of your time. Completing challenges earns you coins and coins are used to unlock the challenges. Rinse and repeat, etc, etc. Eventually, you’ll come up against some very difficult tasks and challenge yourself to better the times, but playing against yourself isn’t really the point. Which is where World Championships come in.
This is a weekly event that gathers five challenges from the single-player mode and lets the world take part. It tracks how many users are playing, where your time sits among them and will show your championship history. When the championship ends you’ll receive your ranking within the world and against those who share the same birth year as you. You can replay the challenges as much as you want to score that fast time, of course.
This is where I believe it could get messy. This is only going to be as popular if Nintendo breaks down the rankings so that everyone feels they can compete. You’ve got Nintendo Switch players out there who regularly speedrun titles like Super Mario Bros and Metroid, streamers and players who regularly check their times against Speedrun.com. It’s going to be hard to incentivise your average player to take part if they don’t stand a chance of ranking well, or at least being able to compete.
There’s also a survival mode available which allows you to play against the ghosts of other players who have finished the challenges. You start in a group of eight that dwindles to four and then two with the eventual winner scoring a bunch of coins. Again, it’s a great idea, but when these servers start to fill up with speedrunners, and they will, can a regular player have a chance to win?
I took part in a few of these and did reasonably well, but from what I can gather, the game is only available to around 300 people for reviewing purposes. I held my own, excelling in the games I’ve played the most, falling down when Ice Climbers came up because it’s never been a favourite of mine.
But, I hear you ask, is it fun?
Oh God yes. It’s brilliant. It’s chaotic and frenetic, it throws you back to days of nostalgia and challenges you to be the best at what you enjoy doing. The game selection is the core of Nintendo and what has made the great over the years. The NES Mario trilogy is here, along with Metroid, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus, Excitebike, Kirby’s Adventure, and the first two games in The Legend of Zelda series.
The challenges are unique and interesting, mixing up the way you would usually think about playing these games. Some will get you to play naturally, but faster, others will give you an objective to meet, like beating a certain boss or opening a secret door. And it’s quintessentially Nintendo, dishing out gorgeous little trophies for beating challenges and letting you unlock sumptuous sprite models of classic characters with the coins you earn and win.
However. There’s always a ‘but’. This is an old-school experience, one based on the most expensive NES cartridge ever valued. Yes, you’re playing the greats, but you’re playing them authentically, wonky controls included. Your mileage is going to vary based on how much you love these games and the way they feel. Your level of nostalgia is going to drive whether you want to play or not, but another factor is how you play them.
You see, Nintendo wants this to feel like a competitive experience, so they want you to be able to watch your own replays or those of players around the world as you play and check on your fastest times. So, while you’re making your attempts you’re doing so in a small window within the Nintendo Switch screen or your TV. Around this is a background, in the bottom left corner is a large timer, another window sits to the right with the replay going, and there’s a bar along the top with extra details. It’s like playing on a Game Boy when handheld, and this could be offputting to some. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it would have been nice to have a feature that expands that window to relish the pixels and gameplay.
As a Nintendo experience, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is brilliant. It’s like walking into an arcade that offers more than just the standard experiences you’re used to. As a competitive product, it’ll only be as good as the audience, and it will need ongoing support from Nintendo. Extra challenges would be nice, and more comprehensive breakdowns and leaderboards will be needed at some point.
It’s a great attempt from Nintendo to join leagues of gamers who keep their titles alive via speedrunning. There are moments that make you feel like Jimmy from The Wizard, with Fred Savage screaming at you to grab the warp whistle. I loved revisiting the golden days of the NES and doing it while collecting cool unlockables and trying my hand at beating great times. Beating a time and seeing an S-rank never gets old, but the life and enjoyment of this game depend on many moving parts and a passion for retro gaming, which might hold this back from being as brilliant as Nintendo would like it to be.
Pros: Brilliant retro representation, engaging gameplay loop, enticing concept
Cons: Cramped playing window, niche scope, will get overly competitive quickly
For fans of: Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, speedrunning, retro gaming
7/10: Very Good
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is available now on Nintendo Switch (version tested). Review code was provided by the publisher. Find a complete guide to GAMINGbible's review scores here.
Topics: Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Mario, The Legend Of Zelda, Retro Gaming