Whilst I’ve been a big Nintendo fan for most of my life, the Nintendo Entertainment System is probably the system I’ve spent the least time playing as I never owned one as a kid, but did play one at friends’ and relatives’ houses a lot. Whilst I own a heap of games for this system, I just prefer the newer stuff, particularly in the 3D systems (and excluding the Virtual Boy, I do own one, but I never play it because it’s awful).
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Release Date
This game went very quickly from its Official Announcement on May 9th 2024 with a release on July 18th 2024. It had previously been leaked early by the ESRB on May 3rd. I know writing this review in 2025 is a bit outdated but I’ve really not been able to play much with my kid crawling over me at all times and this is a game he can attempt to play easily (he likes Excitebike).
Australian Prices
Digitally this game RRPs for $49.95 AUD
Physical Standard Release RRPs for $49.95 AUD
Deluxe NES Edition RRPs for $89.95 AUD
Which Games are Included?
Challenges based on the following 13 games are included:
- Balloon Fight
- Donkey Kong
- Excitebike
- Ice Climber
- Kid Icarus
- Kirby’s Adventure
- Metroid
- Super Mario Bros.
- Super Mario Bros. 2
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
- The Legend of Zelda
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
You earn coins from completing each challenge, which can then be spent to buy new challenges. The full games are also available separately to download on the Nintendo Switch Online Nintendo Entertain System application if you have a subscription.
My Initial Thoughts
I was not particularly excited about the announcement for the Nintendo World Championships NES Edition when I first heard about it. It sounded like a lazy version of the NES Remix titles across the Wii U and 3DS consoles, which involved all kinds of challenges swapping characters and abilities from other franchises and adding functions that were not possible on the original hardware.
That being said, I did find the Deluxe Set to be pretty cool, coming with a replica Gold Cartridge, which as a collector of Limited Run Games’ N64 replica cartridges, it felt like something I should have, plus I usually buy every first-party Nintendo game.
Unboxing The Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition
As well as the standard Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition game card & case for Nintendo Switch, the following premium extras are included.
Decorative Gold-coloured NES™ Game Pak and stand to commemorate the 1990 World Championships. This is a non-functioning shell and is for display only. There is no chip inside, allowing it to fit on the heavy-duty acrylic stand that it also comes with. There is also a cardboard sleeve that replicates the style of the original NES sleeves from the 80s. Of these items, I’m quite impressed with the quality except that the sleeve is cardboard when the vintage ones I’m familiar with were plastic, but the red foil looks cool.
The back of the cartridge features a cute Easter Egg, showing a sprite from each of the 13 games where there would normally be a sticker of copyright and legal information.
13 art cards representing the cover art of each classic NES game featured. There is some truly iconic cover art here and each card is about the size of the original NES box art. These come in a cardboard sleeve.
Set of 5 pins four are replicas of the in-game badges including Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Donkey Kong and one is the logo for this game.
Nintendo World Championships NES Edition Review
I went into this with my expectations quite low. Other than the Mario Bros games which I’ve played massively on their re-releases across SNES, GBC and newer systems, Donkey Kong and Kirby’s Adventure, the rest of the games are ones I never cared for much (yeah, I’m not into Zelda or Metroid games). However, I found everything in this game surprisingly enjoyable. I mean, these are some of the most iconic games on the system after all.
The main game is made up of very short “speedrun” challenges across 13 different classic NES games. I’ve never really cared for speedrunning, I hardly have time to play games myself. I have little interest in watching others do it. However, the way this game has been packaged and presented makes these little time attack challenges very addictive. Especially when trying to chase the best time possible.
Speedrun Mode
I typically hate replaying levels I’ve already played recently, especially if it was a long and difficult level. However, these bite-size challenges, such as getting the first mushroom in Super Mario Bros… Getting the first poison Mushroom in Super Mario Bros The Lost Levels and dying… And entering certain secret locations in The Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros 2.
Each time you play a level, it shows you how it is done so you know what you’re trying to achieve. It then records your best performance, so you can race yourself over and over again until you get the best score you can get. There are buttons you can press that restarts the level so that when you know you’ve stuffed up, you can instantly start over. I think the ability to quickly reset helps feed a competitive instinct inside you and reminds me a lot of Super Meat Boy, which I was once very hooked on.
World Championships Mode
Each week, there are new challenges that you can replay against thousands of other players around the world to try and get the best scores. This adds some replayability to the game, as I’ve found myself beating my previous best scores for levels when trying to compete here.
Survival Mode
This allows you to race against the ghost data of other 7 players from around the world in an elimination tournament. There is a Silver and Gold tier division as a difficulty setting.
Other Things To Do
There are 501 different Player Icons to collect, which are sprites from the games and also 184 Pins to collect from completing certain skill rankings on certain challenges. These give the hardcore collector a lot of reason to replay and perfect their skills.
Conclusion
I enjoyed Nintendo World Championships NES Edition far more than I expected to. I would love to see Nintendo release similar titles for some of their other consoles, even if said World Championship never actually happened in real life. I’d definitely buy Nintendo World Championships SNES Edition or Nintendo World Championships N64 Edition or even for Game Boy. But I have a feeling they won’t happen.
