Now You're Playing with Power... Again! Nintendo World Championships NES Edition

Time to dust off your Nintendo Power magazines, high top Reeboks, and… well… might as well get the clippers out because even the mullet is back in style! No other video game company knows how to squeeze the most out of their old games better than Nintendo, and they’re squeezing the most out of my wallet too. Like many of you NES Page junkies, I’m also a sucker for this stuff. But that’s not to say being a sucker is bad in this case, it’s just that… they got me. Hook, line, and sinker. I see this stuff, and I must have it! And the reason I keep coming back for more is because Nintendo does it SO daggum well! When Nintendo says, “jump,” I say, “I tried, but this Power Pad isn’t working right.” Just kidding. Clearly I say, “How high?” And then I pump up my tennis shoes (or “sneakers,” for all ye northerners) and get to jumpin’.

In mid July of 2024, Nintendo released the aptly named Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, thus continuing their tongue-tying trend of overly long video game names. Truth be told, I saw a trailer for this earlier this year and immediately sh*t my pants with excitement. I sent a hard and fast text over to Jeff, the owner and founder of The NES Page, and I’m pretty sure I heard his excrement through text when he replied. It’s the kind of game that is oddball enough to truthfully not appeal to everyone, but for those of us with a certain amount of gray hairs, and not enough free-time, it checks all the boxes.

IN A NUTSHELL

In a nutshell, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition takes 13 classic Nintendo first-party titles from the NES era, and creates mini speedrun challenges throughout the various games, ranging from – no lie – under 2 seconds long to around 1 minute. It’s wild. There are 4 different modes of play: Survival Mode, Speedrun Mode, World Championships, and Party Mode. World Championships and Survival Mode both involve online play, pitting you directly against other players in specific dedicated challenges (World Championships) or just testing your skills against ghost times from the top players in the world (Survival). Party Mode is couch co-op with up to 8 friends, and Speedrun Mode is your single-player no-internet you vs. you mode as you try to best your own times.

GAMES LIST

Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 2 (NA version)
Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels
Excitebike
Donkey Kong
Balloon Fight
Legend of Zelda
Zelda II
Ice Climber
Kid Icarus
Metroid
Kirby’s Adventure

THAT OLDSCHOOL FEELING

There once was a time when high scores mattered. This was the biggest factor in the arcade scene as holding the #1 high score spot was bragging rights in your hometown. As long as your initials held that top spot, YOU… WERE… GOD. And this was the driving force behind the original Nintendo World Championships in 1990. But as time marched on, keeping score wasn’t as interesting. I blame developers for overinflating those numbers – when everyone’s scores are in the hundreds of thousands and millions, even the crappy players, it’s just not that fun anymore. But I digress.

The OG Nintendo World Championships kept a cumulative score across a few games in an allotted timeframe. This is where the current game differs quite a bit. There’s no score-keeping, and the game is based entirely on completing a particular task within a certain amount of time. Speedrun Mode is more-or-less a practice mode, with great quality of life features such as a tutorial video, showing you what buttons to press, and an auto-rewind feature if you do something really bad (like, crash your dirt bike in Excitebike). The online challenges are posted onto worldwide leaderboards which reset each week when Nintendo releases a new set of challenges.

Sounds simple enough, right? And really it is. It’s exactly what it sounds like. As simple as the game is, its innate ability at sucking you in is absolutely mind-bottling (ya know, when thing are so crazy it gets your thoughts all trapped, like in a bottle). I am admittedly a man with little free-time, so I tend to plow through easy games, 30 minutes at a time. Long-gone are the days when I could play for hours on end. So Nintendo World Championsips: NES Edition is perfect for me. I’ll sit there and repeat the same challenge over and over and over, trying to shave fractions of a second off my record time.

CONCLUSION

Overall, I’m head over heels for Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. I got the physical Deluxe Edition which is downright gorgeous in every way. One thing Nintendo is known for is build-quality and creativity, and the pack-ins of this Deluxe Edition are no exception. The game itself delivers exactly what I wanted: easy pick-up-and-play games in a bite-sized format that’s fun, engaging, and only requires my time for as long as I choose. Some of my personal favorite moments:

The menu music is just… so… 1980s. And I love it.
Playing on the NES Switch Controllers is killer! In my opinion, it plays better than on the Joycons or Pro Controller.
The Donkey Kong challenges are my absolute favorite out of the lot.
I didn’t play Kid Icarus at all growing up, and I felt these challenges were awesome, and now I want to play the real game!
Game selection is on point.
The overall presentation gives me that warm “ahhh Nintendo” feeling in my heart and soul.

For everything I love about Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, I can’t sit here and say it’s totally perfect. For me, it’s pretty close, but I can see the issues others are having. While the game is riding high right now, there may be a lack of staying power, due to its nature. When you have beaten all the challenges, and you’ve won a few World Championships, or gotten close, what is there to keep you coming back? Other compaints I’ve heard are that more games should have been part of the mix.

To address both of those concerns, to some degree I would agree (Dr. Seuss in the house). There is definitely a lack of depth here, because how long can someone actually improve upon their 1.55 second high score in Zelda? And how many times will your family and friends want to do Party Mode with you when you’re just way too good at the game? So I get it. As for the lack of games… I’m not sure I agree with that entirely. I think having too many games out of the gate would dilute the content that’s already here. Plus, once the game starts to get stale, maybe they’ll release some new titles as DLC. I doubt it, but it’s totally possible!

A complaint that I haven’t heard, but I want to personally levy – Playing this game in handheld mode on a standard non-OLED screen is not my favorite. Because it always does a side-by-side of my current in-game session next to my previous run, and paired with the larger border around the two screens, you’re forced to try and play it staring at this tiny box within the screen. It’s tough to get the details and I find my aging eyes straining. This game is better on the big screen (I have not played it on the OLED screen).

To sum this all up, because this article is WAY too long, at the current price-point of $40 for the game or $60 for the Deluxe Edition (which includes the game), it’s worth a grab in my book. And based on Nintendo’s history, I wouldn’t expect that price to drop anytime soon. I say, get the game while the gettin’ is good and the game is hot. And if you live in Japan, your deluxe edition includes two Famicom joycons! No fair Nintendo! No fair!

David "Nerdberry" Berry

Hey there NES Page nerds! A little about me: Born and raised just north of Raleigh, NC. I’m an 80s/90s raised kid, and I often hearken back to those glorious days of simple pre-internet living. *Sigh. The NES was not my first game system, but it does hold a special place in my heart as it was the first system where I could buy the games with my own money. And I loved my first system dearly. Anyway, I’m super excited to share my love of NES and NES-related stuff with you.