Now Nintendo is back with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition for the Switch. This is the modern evolution of the original competition experience, updated and revitalized for new players. While you aren’t going to be winning a new NES World Championships cart, you can get a replica (non-functioning, though modders will probably fix that) in the physical version of the game, along with cloisonné pins and some neat NES cover art.
Let’s take a closer look at what you’re getting into with NWC: NES Edition. This isn’t a standard game by any means so instead of a main game, you’ve got two main options in the main menu, One Player mode and Party Mode. One Player mode is where the bulk of the game is so let’s start there. This mode is broken down into three challenge options: Speedrun Mode, World Championships, and Survival Mode. You can also access player icons and your pin collection but we’ll get to that later.
Speedrun Mode is the main mode of NWC World Championships NES Edition. It consists of 156 challenges spread across 13 classic NES games like Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Excitebike and more. Each challenge (aside from the first vertical row) is initially locked. Challenges start simple – you grab the powerup mushroom in Super Mario Bros 1-1 or climb the first ladder in Donkey Kong. The faster you do it, the higher your ranking. You can get B, B+, B++, A, A+, A++, or an S ranking depending on how fast you complete each challenge. Anything A ranked or over gives you a digital pin for that challenge in your Pin Collection, reminiscent of the original NWC pins from the ‘90s. The goal here is to challenge your own high scores and S Rank every challenge ideally.
The higher you score on this system the more gold coins you get. Initial completion of each challenge gives you a certain number of points and after that, S rank gives you the most coins per completion and so on. Coins are used to unlock the additional locked challenges in Speedrun Mode, allowing you to progress and try to gather as many coins and pins as you can. Challenges get harder moving from Normal to Hard to Master and the final challenge for each game is a Legend challenge, usually fairly difficult and requiring familiarity with the game. Each challenge also provides a video on how to complete it, making it easy for newcomers to a game to understand what to do. Legend challenges give a portion of the video along with Classified Notes to help you so you’ll have to work a little harder there.
You may see the flaw in this design by now, and that’s if you’re an average gamer, S Ranks are hard. Unfortunately, you get the most coins from S Ranks so if you aren’t great at many of these games, you’ll quickly run out of coins and be unable to unlock more playable challenges. You can replay completed challenges and grind for coins but it’s a slow endeavor. Fortunately, there are other modes in the game and those earn coins as well!
World Championships is the next area in the game and each week, Nintendo provides five different World Championships challenges. Not only are you competing against your own score here but also everyone else in the world playing these selections. There are two normal challenges, two hard ones, and a Master level one each week, allowing you to test your mettle against other players from around the world. Each time you try, you also acquire gold coins, helping you to unlock more Speedrun Mode challenges as well. Do well and the points rack up. You can also check your results on the world leaderboards, getting an overall challenge rating, a medal rating based on the percentage of world players you beat, and a second medal rating based on all the players who are the same age as you (as listed on your Nintendo Account)! World Champions in each challenge have their replays saved for everyone to view as well, so if you’re struggling with a challenge, you can watch pros finish it and see what to do.
Finally, the third One Player mode section of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is Survival Mode. In this mode there are two divisions, Silver and Gold. Each division consists of three challenges which also change weekly. In Silver Division, you’ll play two Normal challenges and a Hard challenge while in Gold, it will be a Normal, a Hard, and a Master. This is an elimination game for a Silver or Gold Trophy. You’re playing against 7 other ghost players (logged completions using ghost data). In the first randomized round, you’ll have to get fourth or best and 5th-8th are eliminated. In the second round, you’ll have to get second or better and in the final round, you have to beat your final opponent’s time to win. Do so and not only will you earn the Silver or Gold trophy but a boatload of coins will be yours as well, helping you to unlock even more of the game.
There is one additional use for coins as well. Under Player Icons, you can unlock literally hundreds of additional player icons to represent your character in the game. A handful are already unlocked but there are plenty more, ranging in cost from 20 coins to a thousand! These are basically in-game account cosmetics but if you’re absolutely dominating NWC: NES Edition, you’ll have the change to spare and why not unlock some new avatars? Every game featured in NWC is represented in Player Icons so pick your favorite game and unlock away!
The other major mode in Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is Party Mode. This is a dedicated couch co-op multiplayer mode allowing you to play individual and grouped challenges against friends and relatives. They’ll probably still be your friends afterwards too. Probably. This mode gives you a random character icon for each player and then allows you to decide between individual challenges to play against opponents or Challenge Packs which are designed and curated to provide a multi-challenge experience. Interestingly, all Speedrun Mode challenges are unlocked for Party Mode in the individual challenge mode so if you want to see what’s coming, you can always give Party mode a whirl even before you earn the coins to play it otherwise! You can play anywhere from 2 to 8 players in Party mode, as long as you have the controllers and single joycons can work as individual controllers if you’re running low on extras. Other than that, the game is pretty straightforward, just you proving your dominance over all challengers!
That’s pretty much all there is to Nintendo World Championships NES Edition. Visually, you’re playing HD versions of old NES games and using a very well-designed menu system so there’s not a lot going on visually that will blow you away. The lines are clean though and the menus are very intuitive so it’s easy to navigate NWC and very clear what to do at every step, a blessing for newer players. You can change a few settings as well, allowing you to turn off gameplay instructions, make your screen bigger in Survival mode (DO THIS), and turn off online features if you’re playing without internet. This is a heavily internet-enabled game though, so without a connection, you’ll be missing out. The sound is of course quite straightforward as well with classic Nintendo music and sounds but nothing new or particularly notable to write home about. It’s a soundscape designed entirely to evoke nostalgia and it succeeds fabulously.
If you’re the type of person who wants to play games leisurely, this is not the game for you. This is a speedrunner’s dream game and for those players who want to prove how good they are, refine their techniques, and show their friends who’s the best, this is an amazing game. Personally, I’m not very competitive and while the challenges and design work are clever, I wasn’t grabbed by NWC: NES Edition. My son on the other hand immediately took to it and has been obsessed with playing it since it appeared on the house Switch. Two players, two radically different reactions. He’s a big fan and we ended up going to the Nintendo World Store in New York City where he could play it on a room-sized screen. I think his head may have exploded. Other friends of mine have made their own complex group spreadsheets to track their rankings and times, competing against each other to dominate the group since one of the big ranking systems that’s missing from the game is Friend Rankings. That’s the kind of effect Nintendo World Championships is having on people. They’re literally willing to make their own tracking systems to further enhance the game experience.
If you’re competitive, this is the game to own for you. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is the ultimate in vintage retro competition, providing a new way to experience old games which will change the way you look at classic titles you may or may not have experienced as a kid and turning them into something fun for both individual players and groups. This is a unique title and while you can play almost everything in the game in a matter of days (or hours if you’re really, really good), the challenge to improve and excel will last for much, much longer. It’s up to you whether that appeals to you, but if it does, this is one must-own title for the Switch!
This review is based on a digital copy of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a Switch exclusive.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.