Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a carefully crafted nostalgia trip, in the style of the decade-old NES Remix games, that plays on the competitive spirit of the esports event that Nintendo launched over 30 years ago. Despite being another collection of worn-out NES titles repackaged as a minigame speedrunning challenge, I can’t Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition down. My thumbs (and my work deadlines) are suffering.
Nintendo’s new collection includes 13 classic NES games, presented as a series of escalating challenges. The collection’s Speedrun mode is the main attraction, with 150 trials spread across titles like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of ZeldaAnd Donkey Kongin which players have to complete a short and fun task, such as collecting the first mushroom in Super Mario Bros.or completing a level in Ice climber – as quickly as possible.
This may not sound all that convincing on paper, but in practice, shaving tenths of a second off your best time is strangely intoxicating. As I wrote this sentence, I was just replaying a certain level in a Super Mario Bros. I did the challenge 12 more times, ultimately decreasing my score by 0.13 seconds. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition makes me feel like a real speedrunner, without the years of experience.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is built for speed, both in how short some tasks are — one Super Mario Bros. 2 challenge takes just 1.1 seconds to complete with an S rating — but boy do these challenges load and reload quickly. Miss a jump and you only need to press two buttons to instantly restart a level. Only a handful of challenges last longer than a minute, and they generally involve trials that span entire or multiple levels of a game.
The World Championships mode attempts to revive the spirit of the original Nintendo World Championships competition on a global, internet-connected scale. Each week, players will face five rotating challenges ranging from normal to hard-to-master difficulty levels. This week’s challenges are from Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, MetroidAnd Super Mario Bros. 2and players have unlimited attempts to improve their times before the contest deadline. So far I’ve only competed with people who also have a pre-release copy of the game; our scores will undoubtedly pale in comparison to real professional speedrunners if they get their hands on it Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition.
Nintendo has cleverly considered its audience: the aging millennials and Gen Xers who grew up on the NES. In addition to world rankings for world championships, Nintendo will also publish rankings by birth year, meaning players can compare their times and skills with players of a similar age who also have waning reflexes and little free time.
Players can also compete against other players using their “ghost data” — recordings of other players’ runs through various challenges — in Survival Mode. This mode uses a similar set of challenges from the World Championships mode, and feels like a chance to earn some in-game trophies and coins to spend on cosmetic items, but there’s little else to it.
Additionally, there’s a Party Mode, where up to eight players can compete locally on one screen in themed challenges that vary in difficulty. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to play this mode to its full potential yet, but competing against my wife in speedrun-focused challenges has confirmed that she prefers Mario Kart 8 (or, more honestly, The Sims 4 while I help her pick out stain treatments for furniture).
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is packed with fun, nostalgic touches that reinforce its retro authenticity. It uses the Nintendo Power font treatment throughout its menus, and even revives the tips and tricks from the Classified Information magazine for in-game guides showing how to complete the collection’s toughest challenges. And in World Championships mode, the game overlays the sound of a cheering crowd over the in-game audio, making you feel like you’re competing in one of the Nintendo World Championships events Nintendo has held over the decades.
The biggest complaint I have about Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is the meager selection of games. The catalog includes just 13 NES games, all published by Nintendo, and lacks some obvious 8-bit classics, such as Strike out!!, Doctor Mario, Donkey Kong Jr.and others that were part of the NES Remix series and the NES Classic Edition. This small selection of games stands out because Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Players are asked to choose their favorite NES (or Famicom) game from a catalog that includes hundreds of titles. Hopefully Nintendo will add more NES classics and speedrunning challenges in the coming months to keep the collection fresh.
What is on offer in Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a delight. I don’t think it makes me any better at playing Nintendo’s old 8-bit games, but the challenges it presents are cleverly and neatly designed. The collection lets me approach a small number of familiar NES classics from a new perspective, highlighting just how timeless some of Nintendo’s earliest games are.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition will be released on Nintendo Switch on July 18. The game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a pre-release review code provided by Nintendo. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You may additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.