Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition review for Nintendo Switch

My feelings on Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition are complicated. If you were to ask me whether I enjoyed the game, my answer would be an unequivocal yes. It’s fun, and it doesn’t just bring together a bunch of classic games that have aged well, it breaks them down into bite-sized chunks in a way that pretty much anyone, of any skill level, can play them.

And yet, despite the fact I liked Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, it’s much easier for me to list off the things I don’t like about the game than to say what I do like.

Case in point: if you’ve ever really wanted it underscored how mediocre the Switch’s controllers are, this game does it. I don’t think I’ve ever had strong feelings about D-pad responsiveness or placement…until now. I constantly felt like I was fighting with the Switch’s D-pad in every single challenge. Trying to race Mario across a level or push Kirby skyward, I was struck by how cramped the D-pad feels, and how the real challenge in every level wasn’t meeting the time targets, but pressing the buttons in a way that didn’t feel awkward.

There are also lots of weird design choices. There’s no pausing, for example, even in single-player mode. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to allow a player to pause in the middle of a one-on-one challenge, but playing solo? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Similarly, if you die in a level, it doesn’t mean the challenge is done – rather, it rewinds you a few steps to make you try again, even while keeping the clock ticking. Given that Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is all about speed-running, and that dying in a level usually means you’re not going to hit the targets or beat your opponent, it’s kind of baffling that death doesn’t just mean level over. What’s more, rewinding isn’t always that helpful. Sometimes, in fact, the game rewinds you to just before you stomped on a baddie, without enough time to react you get stuck in a deathloop.

Lastly – and this is just personal preference – it’s unfortunate that Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is solely focused on speed-running. The old NES Remix series found ways to combine speed-running with other new ways of presenting old games. Here, by contrast, you just have the one mode, and even if the old Mario Bros games (to say nothing of the other games included here) were ideal for speed-running, they also had plenty of other good points. Playing these bite-sized chunks just made me want to go back and replay the full games, rather than stick with Nintendo World Championships for arbitrary time limits on brief snippets.

Still, even with all those complaints, I can’t say that Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition isn’t fun. Playing solo, as much as I would’ve preferred to be playing the original games, at the same time, the way these challenges are structured makes it impossible not to want to go back to each level again and again until you get an S-rank on everything; it always feels like you can shave off a few seconds here and there.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is even better if you play it the way it’s meant to be played: on a couch or in your living room, with others. It has a fun local multiplayer mode that allows you to play quick groups of challenges with people of any skill level, along with an online mode that lets you compete with others. I don’t have a Switch Online subscription so I can’t pretend to vouch for that (though more on that in a moment), but I can say that this kind of game is perfect for local multiplayer. I mean, I just played against my wife – someone who doesn’t have anywhere near the same interest in gaming as I do, and who’s one of the least competitive people I’ve ever met – and she was keen to play more and more challenges, and I imagine that it’d be just as engaging for anyone else.

The huge caveat here, of course, is that online doesn’t offer quite the same experience. While you can play against other people, at this time there aren’t online leaderboards, just leaderboards for weekly challenges. Notwithstanding the fact that I’m sure that online leaderboards would have their own issues with cheaters, it’s an unfortunate oversight for a game built around competing.

But there, again, is the crux of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Nintendo. It has plenty of flaws that are very easy to see, and I’m sure those will frustrate lots of people. But at the same time, these games are classics for a reason, and even if the experience isn’t wholly perfect, the package is still enjoyable enough that it’s sure to please pretty much everyone who plays it.

Nintendo provided us with a Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Nintendo Switch code for review purposes.