What parents need to know
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a game that allows you to compete in multiple challenges based on clips from NES (Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo’s first home console). Start Metroid and get the Morph Ball as fast as possible? Catching the first mushroom in Super Mario Bros 3? Reaching the top of a mountain in Super Mario Bros 2? Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition features over 150 time trial challenges from 13 classic NES titles such as the 4 Super Mario Bros, 2 The Legend of Zelda, Kirby’s Adventure, Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Ice Climbers, Excite Bike and Kid Icarus. You can either try to beat your high score or compete against the world. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition offers a plethora of game modes to vary the pleasures. You will also be able to play with up to 8 players in local multiplayer mode on a single console.
Note that the 13 NES games used in this game are not included in their full version, they are only limited time clips and pretext to compete.
The game was provided for review purposes by the publisher. This does not influence our opinion.
Details
Level of experience required
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Evaluation
No problem.
No problem.
Lots of text to read for instructions.
Encourages competition. This can be positive or negative depending on the personalities.
A lot of dexterity is needed as you progress through the challenges. The characters in the NES games also have a lot of inertia. You will often slide platforms.
The physical version costs double the price and contains pins, cards with the games’ likeness, and a replica of a golden NES cartridge. It’s up to you to see if you need it.
Local game modes
Speedrun mode (1 player)
Choose from the challenges unlocked in all 13 games, and make the best time. This is the main mode of the game, and in which we will clearly spend the most time. At the beginning an easy challenge per game is unlocked, and then by completing it, you earn coins, which will be used to unlock other challenges, or icons to represent the player in the different game modes.
Party (2 to 8 players)
Choose from multiple selections of 5 predetermined challenges and compete on them. Scores remain between games. Or choose one challenge at a time from the 150 and compete on it. Fortunately, they are all unlocked directly, regardless of the progression to a player. Scores remain between games.
Online Game Modes
The 2 modes require a Nintendo Switch Online membership and an Internet connection to be played World
Championships
Each week Nintendo sends out a selection of 5 challenges, and all players on the planet compete on each of them in order to get the best time, and the best ranking.
It is possible to try as many times as you want during this week.
Survival Mode
2 Nintendo’s weekly selections of 3 challenges: one in Silver, one in Gold, corresponding to 2 difficulty levels. It’s all about facing random ghosts of past players’ performances, and defeating them in 3 rounds. In each round, you have to be in the top half of the number of participants to progress. This goes from 8 players to 4, and then to 2, after each round. We play in split screen with 8 players, even against ghosts. Unless you are very persistent, neither of these 2 modes will be exciting.
Our opinion
Nintendo World Championships NES Edition is an enjoyable and entertaining game for competitive players who want to persevere to improve their time on each of the 150 challenges offered across the 13 NES games. The menus are quick, the games too. Everything flows smoothly. You can’t take a break during the speed runs, but they last only a few seconds for the most part, and at any time you can restart the current challenge with L + R (it looks like the streamers missed this instruction), or abandon it with ZL + ZR (but you won’t get a point). There are a few flaws though:
- You can’t change the configuration of the buttons. By default, everything is on B and A like on NES, but if you find it more natural to use Y and B like in many other Nintendo games, you’re stuck.
- We play on less than half of the screen constantly, because there is the ghost of other players on the rest of the screen. It’s not practical for people who have vision problems. Even more difficult in handheld mode or multiplayer because it’s divided into 8.
- There is little content, it’s the 150 challenges that you can play endlessly and that’s it. The other game modes are not interesting. It is expected that there will be other updates or DLCs for this game, see a SNES edition.
- There are instructions during the games such as buttons for certain actions or arrows that are displayed. However, sometimes other instructions are missing for those who are not familiar with this or that game. For example, I don’t know much about Zelda 2, and I had a lot of trouble understanding how to pick up an object, or a fairy.
The game design, the interface, the music, the bonuses, the nostalgic trip are very well done. There are a few jokes in the descriptions and different texts of the game. The gameplay loop is addictive as well. The game constantly rewards you for every challenge you complete to the end, for every personal best you surpass, for every A rank you get. Your score is displayed on almost all menus. It makes you want to have nice blue S’s (the maximum rank in Japanese games) everywhere. You also want to unlock everything, the challenges, the icons, the badges. Nintendo rewards its players with crumbs scattered everywhere and we ask for more. Nintendo World Championships has enough to keep you busy for a few afternoons, but is of course much more enjoyable in multiplayer, if everyone in the room has a similar level of play.
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