I have to be honest. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition My reaction after the announcement was… a shrug. The packages that were initially announced didn’t appeal to me. I’m the right age, the right target audience. I’m the type of person who watches speedrunning marathons. But… I don’t know. It feels cheap,in my opinion.
Not including the full game ROM was a red flag for me. In fact, the missions shown when first released were so simple, even trivial… I simply couldn’t understand them. But then I played it. And dear reader, I changed my mind.
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There are caveats to all of this, of course. Not the least of which is the simple fact that I think this is an absolutely fantastic same-room, same-screen multiplayer experience. That’s where this game shines – I think it offers a £25 alternative to Mario Party for those who might not get full-price value from a collection of mini-games that resemble a board game.
But first, the complete kit. In build, it looks like (but I have to tell you technically) no) I got to see all of the core modes in the final version of the game. If you haven’t been following the pre-release info, here are the modes and how they work:
- Speed Run Mode Allows you to purchase each mini-game in a pack and then play them one by one. Completing challenges earns you rewards and coins that can be used to unlock new, more complex challenges – and beat your best records.
- World Championship is a rotating set of challenges that are made up of a series of small speedrunning mini-games strung together. Your total time to complete these challenges will be uploaded to an online leaderboard where you can see how you rank in the current challenge.
- Legend Challenge Functionally similar to the World Championship, but it strings together difficult objectives into a greater challenge.
- Survival Mode You can select a challenge and then play against the “ghost” data recorded by other players from all over the world – so this is not a full online live game, but a single-player game with online features.
- Party Mode is where the party is – literally. In my opinion, that’s why this game is played.
So, let’s talk about party mode. At a preview event for the game, I got to play both casual and tournament modes with a few other press and Nintendo employees – and it was awesome.
Firstly, it supports eight-player gaming – which is an absolutely brilliant idea in my opinion. Eight-player multiplayer is naturally going to be pretty messy… but here it works. NES games run at a native 256×224 pixels (a little larger horizontally for us Europeans) – which means it’s easy to slot eight of them onto a 1080p or even 720p monitor. The screen will then offer the best layout for how many of you are there – and everyone can then play the mini-game at the same time.
Since the nature of the game is built around speedrunning, it features a very old-school split-screen nature. It reminded me of the old days of playing Sonic 2 multiplayer, but less intense and less lame. You need to focus on a small portion of the screen that’s marked at the start of each game. But out of the corner of your eye, you might see others getting ahead of you, falling behind you, or making critical mistakes that would give you a better chance of winning.
Challenges in this game range from extremely simple (catch the first Super Mushroom in Super Mario Bros. 1-1 as quickly as possible) to longer and more complex challenges (complete the first three full stages of Donkey Kong as quickly as possible), while multiplayer’s multi-mini-game “playlists” involve having players play a series of games, each of which awards bonus points based on your position on the team.
The various challenges combine to form a rather Nintendo-esque setup, and even the groups marked as harder contain some of the easier ones, meaning that in a group that could range from white-skinned beginner children to older NES experts, everyone has a chance to win a game or two. The selection of 13 first-party NES games also helps to level the playing field; I’m an expert at Mario and Metroid, but I Pitiful in Ice Climber, and comes last in any challenge involving jump control.
The game selection is small, but good enough for a game of this scale – and it does make one wonder what other versions of the format have been like – with SNES games, third-party titles, N64, and even Mega Drive, etc. Nintendo could actually Regarding something With that, it could become a franchise.
Equally interesting is the competitive aspect of multiplayer, which, even if it’s just for fun, “levels up” the mini-games themselves. In speedrun mode, completing the first Super Mushroom mission solo seems incredibly silly. Who wants to replay the first five seconds of Mario over and over again, trying to shave off a millisecond? In multiplayer, however, it becomes exciting — and that millisecond could decide the overall winner.
In short, it gets the blood pumping. At £25, for those who buy these games at full price and then only play them a few times a year, it seems like a more than adequate replacement for Mario Party, either for a quick and easy bit of fun when there are kids at home, or for a screaming, jaw-dropping competitive game on a drunken night with the adults. I know, that’s how I’ll use this game. So, even after a brief preview of its challenges and modes, I loved it. Classic Nintendo: cynical saboteur.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition will be released exclusively for Nintendo Switch on July 18, 2024.
