I have never participated in Nintendo World Championshipsalthough I’m old enough to remember the first time in 1990. Nintendo World Championships: NES Editionbased on these competitions, is a clever idea for retro gaming fans, bringing together over 100 small timed challenges spread across an assortment of classic NES games. They can be completed against opponents online, in weekly challenges, or against up to eight people in the same room. It’s a party game in the spirit of WarioWare on Switch, fast and edgy, but… I want more.
It’s not just about more games or more challenges, it’s about more Nintendo platforms, not just the NES. And while this game, at $30 digitally (or $60 for the physical box with pins and trading cards), isn’t that expensive, it definitely feels like the kind of bonus game mode that should be included in Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack service.
Let me explain.
The challenges of retro gaming are nothing new for Nintendo. NES Remixfor example, was a clever set of mash-up challenges combining NES games available for the Wii U and Nintendo DS. Nintendo World Championships is a similar idea. In the case of World Championships, however, only 13 NES games are featured in the compilation. They’re great – Super Mario 1, 2, 3 and the Japanese version of Mario 2, Kirby’s Adventure, Metroid, Zelda 1 and 2, Balloon Fight, Ice Climber, Donkey Kong, Excitebike and Kid Icarus – but it’s not a complete collection.
My CNET colleague Sean Booker found the experience to be a blast on an early playthrough, enjoying the competitive vibe of the whole thing. That’s exactly what this game is: a multiplayer party game focused on speedrunning. And if you don’t like that idea, this game might be hard to pick up.
The challenges, though there are over 150, are sometimes very simple. Ones might involve walking through a door or sucking up an enemy as Kirby. Others might involve surviving a particular level or finding a teleport pipe. Arrows and circles indicate where to go if you get confused, and a rewind button activates if you die, adding more time to your timed challenge instead of forcing a retry.
Completing challenges in NES games involves completing quick races to achieve higher rankings.
The sole objective is to complete challenges within a certain time, as quickly as possible. There are online ways to play in groups or during weekly events, but I didn’t have access to the online modes until after the official release. Instead, I was limited to either group play – where up to eight local players can play in their own windows to compete in the same challenge – or solo mode, where all you do is try to beat your own best times by yourself or against ghosts of your best runs.
The single-player mode isn’t worth it, and the party mode seems to get old pretty quickly. What intrigues me is the long-standing online community that’s interested in it and the idea of beating the world’s best scores (or best times). And I think a game like this would be even better if Nintendo made it a staple of its own collections of classic Virtual Console games on the Switch Online service.
Multiplayer board games with eight players at once are clearly the way to go here.
What if the NES games on Switch Online had a remix challenge mode like the World Championships? Or what if the SNES games had them, or the N64 games, or the Game Boy games? I’m asking a lot, but the structure of this game feels more like the skeleton of a future service than a standalone game. It would make more sense to price it that way too, as a subscription.
If you really like classic NES games and want a way to play challenge modes at parties with friends, this is the game for the Switch. I don’t think it will top Mario Party, Mario Kart, the Switch WarioWare Games Or Change sport as board games. I prefer to play these games with my kids. Would I like to have a permanent way to compete with others on the classic game leaderboards? Yes, that sounds like fun. Maybe the World Championships can be the start of that, but I’m hoping for more than the limited edition collector’s edition experience it currently is.