Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Reviews
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition will heavily appeal to a specific group of players, but it’s a very enjoyable title for the unique experience it provides. Casual players will likely not find as much to do here, but those who are raring to clash with others in iconic NES games are in for a treat.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a nice flashback with some cool features, but still feels limited in ultimate approach and concept. You will love the nostalgia, but those who don't have a competitive itch are best to dig out their oldies.
Overall, there is plenty to devour in the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition package - a history trip through Nintendo's original hits in bite-sized, repayable chunks. As a speed-running package, it very much ticks all those boxes. The lack of remixed content and visual tweaks does hinder its potential, however. There is opportunity there, though, for Nintendo to expand the package if they decide to going forward. All in all, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a nostalgic treat for competitive players that's well worth a go or two or three!
Like NES Remix and WarioWare before it, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition offers a good way to revisit challenging moments from a selection of classic NES games.
Celebrating the speedrunning community whilst breathing new life into classic titles, there’s a lot to like about Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition.
I enjoyed my time with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition and will continue to do so thanks to its fun weekly challenges. I hope that this means we'll see indieszero's Retro Game Challenge 1 + 2 Replay release in the west soon. 📺
The concept of “Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition” is simple and ingenious. The little speedrun challenges are nerve-wracking and addictive — both in single player and in local multiplayer or online mode. Overall, I would have liked a few more NES classics and more game modes. But for the relatively low price of the game, you still get an extremely entertaining retro package that lets you experience NES classics in a completely new way.
Review in German | Read full review
Meanwhile, for the average first-party game price, players can also opt to treat themselves with the Deluxe Edition, which includes the game, pins, art prints, and a decorative Gold-colored NES™ Game Pak, which is a considerably great deal as well. Either way, you can’t go wrong and this is bound to be a joyous addition to everyone's collection.
I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, and I'm already thinking of challenging a few friends in the near future. Nintendo has used its creativity to bring back its classics and give them a fun and original alternative. I hope the company will use this to resume competitions, and that an SNES Edition will soon follow.
Review in French | Read full review
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a game tailor-made for speedrunners, and played alone it risks losing its appeal in a short time. It's a creature made for a well-thought-out competitive ecosystem, which with online challenges could keep the interest of its select audience high for a long time, or at least until the arrival of an eventual SNES Edition. Perhaps not for everyone, but intriguing if the challenge doesn't scare you.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Ultimately, I’d imagine most players will likely get about an hour’s worth of satisfaction from Nintendo World Championships NES Edition before finding themselves exhausted, though parties with a bunch of players will help sustain that feeling. Players who are utterly focused on besting their own scores — or those of others online — will likely spend far more time with things. It’s ultimately up to you if that offering is worth its $50 AUD asking price.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition presents a promising concept, but a lack of features to support either dedicated speedrunners or any sort of serious online competition limits the package's appeal. There's certainly fun to be had revisiting this lineup of golden oldies, but Nintendo has only scored a bronze at the Nostalgia Olympics this time around.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is both a loving celebration of the event's origins and a fun and exciting introduction to the world of speedrunning!
Nintendo World Championships NES Edition is a tribute to the great classics that marked a generation and a fun and refreshing experience to enjoy 13 iconic works under a new approach. By bringing the speedrun mode to a wider audience, Nintendo once again demonstrates its great development skills.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
For a game that’s all about speedrunning, it’s ironic that Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition feels rushed. Although I certainly had a great time going for an S-tier rank in all the challenges presented, the obvious omissions makes the game feel more like a missed opportunity rather than a complete package. If you’re interested in learning the basics of speedrunning or wanna take a nostalgic trip down memory lane, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is sure to provide many hours of fun, but otherwise, the larger library of NES titles offered to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers is probably enough to suffice.
It feels like it would fit better as an additional mode to some sort of NES Remix compilation. And that’s ignoring the fact that NES Remix 2 already had a mode based on the Nintendo World Championships. Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition is a celebration of the classic console; it’s just one that lacks excitement and is too exclusive for its own good.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a release held together by sentiment and atmosphere, partly because that aspect of the game is so good and partly because the remainder of the game is so devoid of merit.
Consequently, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition feels like a release schedule filler. While the multiplayer features are robust, they’re hardly innovative, and really it’s just a package of sliced-up classic games with a timer attached to them. I’d never call a game development project “lazy,” because they’re not, but the minimum work has gone into this, and while it will become a competitive obsession for a small minority, there could have been so much more done to draw in a much broader audience and really celebrate the deep heritage of these games (as well as Nintendo in facilitating competitive play).
To sum up, I do find Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition to be a fun distraction and a half-decent party game. Local multiplayer is obviously more exciting than playing alone but joining the weekly championships is fun too. The weekly challenges are engaging as is the Survival Mode. I just wish it included Red Racer too, or at the very least Tetris. If the game entices you purely for the NES nostalgia then you're golden, but if you are looking for a recreation of the 1990 championships then this isn't the title for you.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition for the Switch valiantly tries to evoke the speedrunning spirit of Nintendo's real-world, 1990 competition, but the challenges are too flimsy for a 2024 release.