Nintendo deserves and often rightly gets a lot of credit for the proliferation of esports and speedrunning, two competitive video game subcultures that have exploded in recent years. The Nintendo World Championships events were among the first high-profile, publisher-led efforts at esports, and many of the best-known speedrunning records are based on classic NES games. It makes sense, then, that Nintendo would capitalize on its place in history with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, a hybrid speedrunning tutorial and ongoing online competition for Nintendo Switch. While the tools are a bit barebones for true speedrun enthusiasts, the presentation nicely preserves and illuminates the joy of racing to shave milliseconds off your best time.
Nintendo World Championships kicks off on a self-congratulatory tone, having you peruse icons, favorite NES games, and “Hype Tags”–slogans from throughout Nintendo history–to build your profile. The icons are all from Nintendo-published NES games, but the “favorite games” include lots of third-party games and even Famicom listings. Similarly, the slogans run the gamut from nostalgic (“Plays With Power”) to more contemporary (“Retro Game Collector”). It’s a nice little touch of personalization to welcome you into Nintendo’s long history.
Once you’ve created your profile, you can choose One Player or Party Mode. The One Player menu greets you with three gameplay options: Speedrun Mode, World Championships, and Survival Mode. Speedrun Mode makes for the bulk of single-player, and is composed of a large collection of challenges from across 13 classic Nintendo games. Those challenges are then reused for the solo online play and Party Mode challenges. The challenges include each NES Super Mario Bros. game (including the so-called Lost Levels), Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Excitebike, and Balloon Fight, among others.
