I never competed in Nintendo’s World Championships, although I’m old enough to remember when the first one happened in 1990. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, based on those competitions, is a clever idea for retro game diehards, collecting 100-plus small, timed challenges spread across an assortment of classic NES games. They can be completed against online opponents, in weekly challenges, or against up to eight people in the same room. It’s a party game in the spirit of WarioWare on the Switch, fast and twitchy, but… I want more.
Not just more games or more challenges but more Nintendo platforms, not just the NES. And while this game, at $30 digitally (or $60 for the physical box with collector pins and cards), isn’t that expensive, it really feels like the sort of bonus gaming mode that should be rolled into Nintendo’s Switch Online Expansion Pack service.
Let me explain.
Retro gaming challenges aren’t new for Nintendo. NES Remix, for example, was a clever bunch of mash-up challenges blending NES games available for the Wii U and Nintendo DS. Nintendo World Championships is a similar idea. In the case of World Championships, though, only 13 NES games are featured in the compilation. They’re great ones — 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 comprehensive collection.
My CNET colleague Sean Booker found the experience great in an early playthrough, appreciating the competitive vibe of the whole package. That’s exactly what this game is: a speedrun-focused multiplayer party game. And if you don’t love that idea, this game might be tough to get into.
The challenges, although there are more than 150, are sometimes very simple. Early ones could just be going through a door or sucking up an enemy as Kirby. Others may involve surviving a particular level or finding a warp pipe. Arrows and circles point out where to go if you’re confused, and a rewind button kicks in if you die, adding more time to your timed challenge instead of forcing a do-over.
Completing challenges in a certain time, as fast as you can, is the only goal. There are online ways to play with groups or in weekly events, but I didn’t have access to online modes ahead of the official release. Instead, I’ve been limited to party play — where up to eight local players can play in their own windows to compete in the same challenge — or single-player mode, where all you do is try to beat your own best times on your own or against ghosts of your best runs.
Single-player mode isn’t worth it, and party mode feels like it could get old fast. What makes me curious is the long-term online community for this and the idea of beating global high scores (or best times). And I think a game like this would be even better if Nintendo made it a core part of its own Virtual Console collections of classic games on the Switch Online service.
What if the NES games on Switch Online had a remix challenge mode like World Championships? Or, what if the SNES ones did, too, or the N64 ones, or Game Boy games? I’m asking for a lot, but the structure of this game feels like the skeleton of a future service more than it does a stand-alone game. It would make more sense to price it that way, too, as a subscription feature.
If you really love classic NES games and want to cherish a way to play challenge modes in parties with friends, this is that game on the Switch. I don’t think it’ll top Mario Party, Mario Kart, the Switch’s WarioWare games or Switch Sports as party games. I’d rather play those with my kids instead. Would I love to have a permanent way to compete with others on leader boards for classic games? Yes, that sounds fun. Maybe World Championships can be the start of that, but I’m hoping for more than the limited collector-edition experience it currently is.
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