Recently Nintendo released Nintendo World Championships NES Edition on the Switch.  It’s more or less very similar to the NES Remix games on the Wii U and 3DS, except with more of a focus on speedrunning.  I was able to get the Deluxe Set, so I wanted to show off what’s in there.  Plus this’ll be a little review of the game, too.  I was really glad to get the Deluxe Set of this game because I attended the first Nintendo World Championships back in 1990 when it was in Dallas.  I even wrote an article about it almost ten years ago, and I encourage you to follow the link and read that one, too, so you’ll know just how special that was to me.  And after you’ve read that, come back here and check out what’s in the Deluxe Set of the Nintendo World Championships NES Edition!

First of all, here’s a bigger picture of the box.

And here’s the back of the box.

One of the cool things this set comes with is a replica of a gold NES cartridge of the Nintendo World Championships 1990.  I love how it even includes one of the old NES game sleeves.  Remember those?  The cartridges that were used in the competition are sought after by collectors, and Nintendo Power even had contests where you could win gold versions of these cartridges, so this was pretty neat.  It even comes with a little stand.

I do want to emphasize that this is just a replica.  I took a picture of the bottom so you can see there are no circuit connectors or anything like that.

On the back of the cartridge are these little symbols.  I think they are sprites representing the games in this title, but it was so shiny and glary that it was kind of hard to see them.  But I took a picture of them anyway.

In the game you can complete challenges where you do certain things in NES games as quickly as you can.  It might be getting the first mushroom in Super Mario Bros., getting the sword in The Legend of Zelda, or harder things like finishing the first three stages of Donkey Kong or beating the first Zelda dungeon.  When you get an A rank or above in these activities, you earn a virtual pin.  The Deluxe set comes with actual versions of some of those pins, so that was neat.

The thirteen games you can do competitions on are as follows:

Balloon Fight

Donkey Kong

Excitebike

Ice Climber

Kid Icarus

Kirby’s Adventure

Metroid

Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, 3, and Lost Levels

The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

The Deluxe Set comes with “art cards” representing the thirteen games on this collection.  The front of the cards has the US box arts from those titles.

The back of the cards has sprites from the games.

And last but not least, the set comes with the game itself.

When you first play the game, you have to set up a profile.  You can pick sprites from the various games on here, and buy more with points you earn by playing.  You can also pick your favorite NES game for everyone to see.  This is cool because the list includes nearly every officially released NES title!  I don’t think I have a favorite NES game, but here I chose Chip N Dale’s Rescue Rangers because I thought it was cool that was on here.

In single player, you can do Speedrunner Mode where you do the challenges separately.  This is where you earn the pins.  There’s also a mode where you compete in weekly challenges against other players.  And there’s a mode where you compete against eight other players’ ghost data at the same time.  There is also a Party Mode where up to eight players can do a local competition!  I think it’s neat how in some of the modes, when you play you can hear cheers in the background like you’re at a real competition.

I do wish this game included more titles, and I can understand other peoples’ problems like having to play the challenges by Nintendo’s rules (the game rewinds if you stray from their intended path).  And they’re basically just repackaging NES games you’ve already probably bought multiple times by now.  Also it would’ve been neat if you could play the actual 1990 competition games, but then Nintendo would’ve had to get the license to use Rad Racer from Square and Tetris I guess. And just know that when you are playing, you can’t pause the game for some reason.  But it is a neat new way to play old games.  I’m not really into the speedrunning scene, but I did find this game more addicting than I thought it would be.  Not as good as NES Remix, but still neat.  Maybe later they’ll do a SNES Remix or a SNES Edition of this game!  Anyway, that’s all for now, later!  –Cary

Tags: Game Reviews