Remember NES Remix on Wii U? We loved it back in the day, and now Nintendo has seen fit to return to similar territory with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, a game that aims to put you in the shoes of a competitor in the Nintendo World Championships!
Okay, maybe we’re forcing the excitement a bit here, it’s actually pretty hard to get excited about another compilation of bite-sized challenges from old 8-bit games that we’ve played through many times before, but hey, here we are, and guess what? We’re actually having a lot more fun than we thought we would.
Yes, this collection of 13 Nintendo classics is divided into small playable challenges, and it includes games like Super Mario Bros 1-3, Kirby’s Adventure, Excitebike (always this author’s favorite), Ice Climber, Kid Icarus, and of course, Zelda and Metroid. At first glance, it all looks a lot like NES Remix. However, there’s actually a lot more here less in terms of diversity of objectives and methods of resolving challenges.
At its core, and as we’ve already detailed in our full hands-on preview, this game is all about speed. Achieve your goals as fast as you can. You get a score on your final time and win by being the fastest, and the challenges range from Easy to Master difficulty. Simple. If that sort of thing stresses you out, well, prepare to be stressed out, we guess.
We spent a good chunk of time in the offline Speedrun mode before the game’s servers went live on launch week, and it’s essentially a training ground where you can take on each challenge as many times as you want. Catching your first Super Mushroom, running through a section of a level and grabbing the pole, smashing Octoroks, doing fancy jumps… no matter what the current challenge is (and there are 150 to try), it’s good old-fashioned speed that’s all there is to it.
There’s no doubt about it, it feels like we’ve been downgraded to begin with and, as mentioned in our preview, the older games here haven’t had the small visual changes that NES Remix did. However, with the reduced price involved and after spending some time in the main online modes (World Championships and Survival), our opinions have gone from extreme bewilderment to a very good time, thank you very much.
Why? Well, once you’re in the swing of things, once you start competing, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition kicks it into high gear and becomes something we can continue to dive into for the renewed challenges that make up the game’s two main modes. World Championship changes its five challenges on a weekly basis, giving you a bunch of normal, hard, and master challenges to try. Your times are then entered into leaderboards, with an overall ranking and a ranking by birth year.
Survival mode, the best of the bunch, gives you two leagues, Silver and Gold, to try out, as you complete three challenges against other players’ ghost times and try to finish in the top spot to avoid elimination in three rounds. Again, it’s all very simple, but the fluidity and immediacy of the online aspects make it something that’s hard to shake off once you’ve adopted that mindset of shaving more and more seconds, or milliseconds when it becomes real, off your performance. It becomes hypnotic, and that’s all we can really ask for. It’s also the kind of thing that’s going to get a lot more competitive as more players join in, and we’re now eagerly awaiting the floodgates to be able to beat you all. Yes, it’s a direct challenge.
Of course, there’s also a Party mode for local co-op that supports up to eight people, and speed is the name of the game again, this time racing through the same challenges but in themed packs and the like. We’re not going to sit here and say this is an ultra-generous package – it really isn’t – and each mode is more of the same, just in a different way. The game looks great, the menus are super responsive, online play works as expected, and it all runs perfectly on handheld, but these are still just bite-sized samples of some very old games, without much in the way of tweaks or surprises. There could certainly have been more effort in that regard.
What ultimately pushed us to a more positive place was the thrill of seeing younger gamers try out NES games for the first time. If you have kids or are playing with younger or newer players, it’s a real treat to watch them try to figure out how slow and difficult these old beauties are. It’s also a great way to educate people on some of the must-haves through this very quick history of highlights. Once you’ve mastered all of these challenges and opened up the global leaderboards, you’ll know everything there is to know about what it feels like to play some of the most important milestones in gaming history.
You’ll no longer have to wonder what it feels like to fall down a long vertical corridor in Metroid after carefully working your way to the top (spoiler: it’s boring), and really, isn’t that worth the price of admission alone, not to mention all your weekly challenges and trophies?
Finally, we also love the collecting and customizing aspect of items here. Nintendo knows we’re all big fans of this sort of thing, with profile icons and name tags celebrating various achievements, and they’ve stacked up a whole bunch of collectibles to be picked up in each of the 13 games available via coins earned through play. No need to pay for extras, no nonsense, just play the game, get good at it, and earn coins. The good stuff.
So, ultimately, for your $25, it’s a pretty straightforward deal. There are no surprises or improvements, just a bunch of classic Nintendo games cut into iconic sections that you can play through and then repeat until you’ve squeezed every last nanosecond out of it. A party-night must-have? We think so, though it could have been better with just a little more effort to surprise us all.
Conclusion
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition doesn’t make a great first impression. It’s a step down in many ways from NES Remix, and there’s not as much variety or effort in the challenges, or any graphical changes to speak of this time around. However, stick with it, get into the competitive mindset, and start collecting all the pins, icons, and best times on offer, and you might just find yourself thoroughly entertained. It’s a small thing, purely focused on speed, but we think it’ll suit a lot of people who want a competitive way to show off their skills the old-fashioned way. And hey, it’s also a handy history of some iconic Nintendo gameplay moments and mechanics.