Remember the Nintendo World Championships? Of course you don’t. It was a videogame competition, born in the 90s, that invited gamers to go fast. Real fast. Specifically, it involved a custom-made NES cartridge containing three games, Tetris, Super Mario Bros, and Rad Racer, all modified for a competition-style event to see who could pull off a win in the fastest time. It’s called speedrunning. Now, Nintendo is resurrecting the NWC. Sorta.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition isn’t another round of the official tournament, though it’s maintaining that speedrunning ideology that made the show such a hit. Instead, it’s a new Switch title that’ll pit players against leaderboards (and themselves) in a whole lot of original NES titles like Metroid and that classic, Super Mario Bros. The game lands on 18 July as both a digital and physical release.
Gotta go fast
In total, there are 13 games in NWC: NES Edition, split up into 150 “byte-sized” speedrunning challenges. It sounds mightily similar to Nintendo’s NES Remix series released ten years back. We’ve already mentioned Metroid and Super Mario Bros, but NES Edition is bringing back other classics such as The Legend of Zelda, Kirby’s Adventure, Excitebike, and the original Donkey Kong.
The game includes a global leaderboard to see how you fare against the world’s best retro speedrunners, or local 8-player modes so that you have a chance of actually coming out on top. Each challenge includes a short snippet of footage to help you learn the ropes and tactics involved, before attempting to conquer it yourself.
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Players can already pre-order NWC: NES Edition on the Nintendo e-shop ahead of the 18 July release. If you’re after a piece of memorabilia, there’s a ‘Deluxe Set’ that’ll suit you just fine. It includes a physical copy of the game, 13 art cards, five pins and a gold-coloured replica Game Pak, mimicking the tournament’s original 3-game cartridge which is selling for, no joke, $175,000 (or R3.2 million) over on eBay. It’s unplayable, unfortunately, but we guess that explains the $60 price tag.