Do you just kind of hate your friends? Well, the bad news is that the just-released Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition doesn’t easily destroy those bonds by delivering the kind of intense battle to nail down the best time on the first level of Super Mario Bros. that many gamers were expecting.
Since the game is based around speedrunning through sections of different classic NES games through a series of challenges, it seems natural that a leaderboard tracking players’ recorded times — so you can frantically try to outdo some guy called Tim who’s so good at Kirby’s Adventure you’re 99% sure he’s cheating — would be a pretty big part of the experience. And yet, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
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Now, before we get into the complaints of people who probably listen to DK rap every day (it’s a cultural touchstone, as it should be), let’s get one thing straight. Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition does have a leaderboard. However, it appears to be just a weekly world ranking list.
This means you can only see it after the weekly event has finished, and you can no longer set new times for it, eliminating the opportunity to spend seven days grinding to shave five milliseconds off the time it takes to grab a Super Mushroom so you can quickly climb the leaderboard and see exactly how close you are to beating your friend or grandmother’s PB. So, aside from certain modes where you can race against ghosts, you can only race against yourself.
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Of course, some reviewers and many on Reddit and Twitter who were looking forward to the game were not happy with this. “I played it for a while, but it’s a shame that there are no leaderboards or friends for this type of game. Probably won’t play this game for a long time. Nintendo Online Features [stuck] exist [the] “19th century,” someone wrote.
Some people have taken to taking pictures of their screens and texting them to the friends they’re challenging, kind of like the modern version of taking pictures with an old-school camera and mailing them to Nintendo Power magazine.
Are you planning on picking up Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition to give it a try? Let us know below.
