So I Tried Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never tried before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time I went for a game I had been wishing for since I saw the movie “The Wizard", the Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition.

What I thought it was

Growing up, my first console was the NES. I have many memories of playing titles like those from the Super Mario series, Donkey Kong, and Balloon Fight, among many others. Since my dad had a subscription to Nintendo Power, I had seen advertisements for the Nintendo World Championship competition that was held in the US, but since I was in Canada, I didn’t give it much thought. Little did I know, this competition plays a big role in the movie “The Wizard” starring Fred Savage, as I never saw it until I was in my 20s. I figured this game would have you playing that same combination of three games: Super Mario, Rad Racer, and Tetris, trying to get the highest score possible in six minutes and 21 seconds like the real thing.

What it actually is

Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition actually feels more like the NES Remix title that was released on the Wii U back in 2013 and later on the 3DS. Here, you have short challenges in a variety of classic NES games that you try to complete as fast as you can. When you play this title on the Switch, you can choose to play solo or with up to eight other people in Party Mode. Keep in mind that this is split-screen multiplayer, so the more gamers that play with you, the smaller the individual screens will be. You are racing against each other, trying to complete the challenge faster than your opponents. You can choose each game individually, but we found it more fun to play sets of five challenges to determine the winner. These offer a variety of themes, like having you fight against one of the Koopa Kids from Super Mario Bros. 3 for each of the five challenges, finding out who was the fastest at defeating their foe, and jumping to grab the falling wand.

If you are playing solo, you can compete against players from all over the world in a time trial, trying to be faster than they are. This isn’t a live competition; it’s just racing against their ghost runs for their personal best time. If you don’t place in the top four, you will be kicked out. If you do make it to the next round, your time has to be in the top two. This way, the third and final round has them battling head-to-head to determine the champion.

If you don’t want to battle against other players, there is the option to play the challenges and set your own high score. If you aren’t happy with the time you got, just click the retry button and try again, and again if you are like me. If I knew that I could do better, it was quite difficult to quit and move on to the next. This game can be very addictive!

Will I keep playing

I will definitely keep playing Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything I would like to change about it. When you play Party Mode, your profile icon is randomly selected for you. I’m not sure why everyone can’t select their own. Maybe they thought everyone would be fighting for the same one? The other big thing that I found annoying is that when you play locally, each player can’t put their name in. So if someone sets a high score, we have no idea who got that score. I am aware that some of my husband's scores were higher than ones I got, but we don't know which ones were mine. To keep track, we may need to maintain a spreadsheet or similar system. My final wish was that they actually had the same challenge as in the Nintendo World Championship competition, so you could feel like you were part of that original event. It would be so fun to see how you rank against other gamers around the world. Given that Square Enix developed Rad Racer, I understand that obtaining permission to include it might be challenging, but it would be preferable to replace it with a title that Nintendo already owns. I’m hoping that as time goes on, maybe some updates will come to the title to address some issues.