I’ll admit, I’ve never been fond of speedrunning. The thought of shaving milliseconds off a time in a video game while playing the same sequence over and over sounds, in theory, more frustrating than fun. Sure, as a spectator, there is definitely joy in appreciating the wizardry of players pulling off pixel-perfect feats and shattering a runtime record. But I have neither the time nor the mettle to contemplate doing so myself.
Fortunately, this year gave us a game that weaved together 8-bit era charm, bite-sized accessibility, and addictive skill refinement. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition was my gateway to finally “getting” speedrunning, and it’s some of the most fun I’ve had gaming in 2024.
It’s the only game I’ve played this year that resulted in me letting out an involuntary shout of triumph when I bested my competitors in consecutive speedrunning challenges, earning myself a (screenshot of a) gold trophy. It was sweet, sweet consolation for all the IRL trophies I failed to win throughout my life, and so it brought me immense satisfaction.
Just to recap, the game was released in July and features condensed speedrunning challenges extracted from 13 iconic NES titles. Its World Championship Mode allows for placement on a weekly leaderboard while the Survival Mode pits you against other players' ghost times across three challenges to avoid elimination. There’s also an eight-player party mode.
The game received solid but not glowing reviews (Nintendo Life gave it a 7/10). Some critics deem it less ambitious and creative than developer indieszero’s previous retro compilations, the quirky NES Remix series on Wii U and 3DS. I wouldn't necessarily dispute that but I found NWC's focus on pure speedrunning challenges to be meticulously well-executed.
Part of what makes it so difficult to put down is its snappy gamefeel and sound design. Each challenge begins with a whistle countdown and ends with a satisfying pop and synth effect in a way that tugs your dopamine receptors to smash 'Play again' to improve your PB. It’s an even better experience playing with an NES controller for the as-intended button feel.
Though it might not be my Game of the Year (that one goes to Animal Well), it brought out the competitor in me and ultimately made me a better player. While we’ve all played our share of NES games over the years, World Championships’ emphasis on mastery helped me discover the deep control scheme nuances of classic titles in a way I hadn’t before.
Take, for example, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, a game I’d barely touched before this due in part to its infamous difficulty. Working my way through its speedrunning challenges helped me come to grips with the game’s punishing combat. Some of its challenges, like the Master-rank 'Neigh Slayer', initially felt impossible to complete with an S-tier time.
That one in particular involves beating a horse-headed boss with precisely timed aerial sword slices, a move that eventually felt intuitive with practice. When I later fired up the original version of Zelda II on Nintendo Switch Online, I found myself enjoying the game far more than I ever had before because World Championships had essentially shown me the ropes.
Even games I know fairly well, like Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, and Kirby’s Adventure, had new layers revealed with help from the Nintendo Power-inspired 'Classified Information' sheets, which cover the most efficient routes, combat strategies, and movement tricks. I came away with a deeper appreciation of the craftsmanship behind these classics.
For several months, I've tackled its weekly challenges religiously, even managing to top the leaderboard (once). I find the game’s competitive modes perfect for zeroing in on the specific challenges on offer every seven days. Focusing on the handful of challenges each week helped me push the envelope and consistently improve my personal best timings.
Watching the weekly replays of the top players has been equally fascinating (Nintendo has since put up a website showing off each week’s top performances). Seeing their precision and efficiency in action is humbling and sometimes surprising: there was a small controversy early on when a cheeky player exploited a glitch in Donkey Kong that few people knew existed.
The game’s engagement has understandably waned in the months since its release, with fewer taking part in weekly competitions. While it’s a long shot, I’ve still got my fingers crossed for DLC content. Punch-Out!! is a glaring first-party omission, and the inclusion of landmark third-party NES classics from the Contra, Castlevania, or Mega Man series would draw players back if agreements could be made with Konami or Capcom.
One of the coolest things the developers could add is a new standalone challenge based on the actual 1990 Nintendo World Championships custom cartridge (among the rarest NES collectibles that sell for tens of thousands of dollars), which tracks the cumulative scores of three Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer, and Tetris – played in sequence. Incorporating it feels like a no-brainer. There is also niche demand for it, with various reproductions of the custom cart available, one of which Nintendo has acted against. Give the people what they want, I say.
Many will naturally be pining for an SNES Edition of this title with the same format, just as folks were hoping for an SNES Remix. It’s hard to say whether they’ll be such a follow-up, but one hopes Nintendo and indieszero don’t sit on their hands. Nintendo won’t shy away from further celebrations of its legacy, but we’ll likely have to wait for another big anniversary — or a big gap between heavy hitters on in the Switch (2) release calendar!
As it stands, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition may not have been the flashiest game of 2024, but, for me, it remains a standout with plenty of untapped potential. It’s a loving homage to the glory days of the NES and the 8-bit culture that surrounded it. Most of all, it’s a celebration of the timeless classics that still shape my love for gaming.
Comments 25
I am still waiting to hear an SNES Edition come but I know it won't.
I never bothered with this as it seems like a half hearted release. I'm sure it's fun and addictive but some of the challenges are so short, you wonder why they were even added. It could have been more and should really have been an NSO title, that linked to the full games in the NES app.
I had a blast with NWC. I grew up with most of these games and had no interest in speed running them. It was great getting to play them from a completely different angle, and being able to share them, in bite sized form, with my daughter. Its a nice addition to the rotation with the NES remixes.
I enjoyed this release much more than I thought I would. The weekly challenges have been a lot of fun to get S-rankings on. I can see why this game might not appeal to those who didn't grow up with the NES though. I'm just fortunate enough to be that old. 😅
Nintendo World Championships is BY FAR my most played game of 2024. On paper, it looks pretty thin on content, but this game is a master class on how smart presentation and design can elevate a novel premise to a can’t-miss weekly event. If nothing else, NWC is certainly the most underrated game of the year.
This game was fun for a while, but it was sorely lacking in content.
Also I am of the opinion that the game feels incomplete as a package without the ability to just play the NES games normally.
I don't care that they're on NSO subscription, that's neither here nor there. This game should have included the full games, with added timers and splits and leaderboards and all sorts of other speedrun-friendly additions.
The fact that it doesn't let you play the full games unrestricted shows that Nintendo is willing to let their products suffer in content and quality, in order to persuade users to join their subscription services, which I am not a fan of at all.
We're a long way aways from the days of Animal Crossing containing 21 NES games. ...Nowadays we can't even get NES games included in a game literally about NES games.
@OorWullie I think the idea was that you could link together the small challenges to get a really fast time on beating a level start to finish.
However, you are right. The build up doesn’t really pay off and those mini challenges just are not that fun.
As many have said, the NES Remix games brought better and more diverse challenges.
Yep, my experience with this game is quite similar and I hope Nintendo will eventually give us DLC for it and/or new titles dedicated to games from other systems!
It was like the Temu version of NES Remix.
I love reading articles like this. Someone takes a game with middling reviews and explains why they absolutely love it. Not every game has to be a 9 or 10 to be great for a group of people.
I have the game, played it a lot for 2 or 3 weeks, then haven’t gone back. I had fun for those few weeks. But like I said, I enjoyed reading this.
I ended up skipping this one because I heard that they mapped the controls to A and B rather than the more obvious B and Y, with no option to change it in the game. I hate using the system level button remapping feature. Nintendo is one of the few developers in the industry that still doesn't feature basic options in their games.
@MARl0 Skill issue
I still need to play this. I think it would have been a great fit for NSO, but I know they wanted to reach broader audience, so I get it. Still think it should've been an ongoing update/DLC, but maybe with the next iteration.
@drypaphmrbro More like a disability issue due to my arthritis. It's far easier and more comfortable for me to use B and Y for action buttons than A and B.
It felt like this game was not really sure what it wanted to be.
The really short challenges often felt really boring to me, and I ended up greatly preferring the long challenge for each game (I know a lot of people feel the exact opposite). I personally got quite hooked on the SMB3 challenge for a while.
But then I just felt..."why is there only world 1 to speedrun/master in SMB3? Why does SMB2 not even have a challenge like this?" (that game only have you speedrun the first level). It just feels really random. A mix of super short, often boring challenges and then just one long challenge which is most often just a slice of a game. I have not mastered any game, just the small portion of it that Nintendo (seemingly randomly) chose to include.
My takeaway from this game was that I think Nintendo should release a speedrun mode for each game, they could surely implement that in the Switch NES app. That would be really awesome actually, letting us have a framework helping us learn how to speedrun classic games. I can´t see that taking much work either.
But this game, once I got the best medal on all challenges (which honestly did not take that long) there was nothing to really come back to.
Love this game. Hope they build on it further, because the foundation is really good 😊
"Animal Well is my Game of the Year, but I got a huge kick out of Nintendo World Championships" Are you me?
Nintendo World Championships absolutely isn't a perfect game. It feels lighter on content than it needs to be; the actual championships are starting to get a bit more stale because of how they're repeating challenges from previous weekly events. It could've incorporated more NES titles as well. It would've been nice to see some NES Remix-style challenges (though I think people forget how many of its own challenges were unaltered NES games). But its bite-sized approach to speedrunning still had me hooked, and tying for 1st in the world multiple times by now (which I'm most proud of doing on Balloon Bopper because it was rated hard instead of normal) has felt really gratifying. I think people will come around on the format if they continue with it and address the areas where the game can feel lacking. SNES and GBA versions of NWC would be excellent.
@ikki5 I’m still hopeful it will have done well enough to get a sequel
I really really enjoyed it but also one of those times that it has so much missed potential as well. Hopefully they do more
You should have played NES Remix 1 and 2!
Those, individually, are infinitely better than this "championship" collection!
I think the only reason I haven't played this yet is because I LOVE Ultimate NES Remix on the 3DS so much, that this felt like a pale imitation.
Maybe I will have to give it a go after all.
@MARl0 Ah, sorry! Would a modified dogbone help?
@EarthboundBenjy although i don’t really agree woth tour point. (I think everybody who bought this fame gas acess to to nes games anyway) you dod inspire me to boot uo animal crossing gc on my hacked wiiu which i have all nes fames unlocked;)
I had a lot of fun with this one too. People that dismissed it for not being and NES Remix game, but they missed the point, while it's very similar... this game is also a completely different thing.
Helped me dip my toe in the speed running genre; u would never be able to get the required set up otherwise.
Loved this game. Could it be improved - yes. Is it still great I. It's current form - IMO yes as well.
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