Summary
Oh,Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. I love you as much asNintendoloves giving products the longest official name possible. And don’t worry, you don’t fool me: I know you’re just a new, slightly different version of the NES Remix games from theWii Uand3DSdays. But that’s why I love you: you take old games and break them into the smallest possible chunks, allowing me to spend half a minute racing to the top of aMetroidstage 15 times before I get an S score.
After two years of the longest role playing games on Earth, after a decade of having to climb towers to activate fast travel, it is such a relief to get something that serves up slices of the classics like out-of-context movie clips that don’t make sense.
In other words, it’s the perfect game for my addled, broken, attention-deprived brain. In a world of endless anxieties and rolling news stories that make me want to repeatedly smash my head against a table while saying “Hail Satan”, I needed a game that requiresnofocus. A game that requires zero thought outside of strategizing jumps. Something with basically zero tutorial.
I needed to not have an hour of being stopped every three steps for a dialogue box explaining to me that I should click through to the in-game encyclopedia if I want to understand anything. It’s just a game full of bits and pieces of other games.
This is something that feelscreatedfor me. Although, I’m not going to lie to you: I am a Nintendo fanboy. I have been throughout my whole life. Also, full disclosure: I worked for the company as a writer/editor for two years before making the lifelong mistake of thinking ‘comedy’ was a career path worth taking.
That said, me saying nice things about a Nintendo game doesn’t get me anything (I really, really wish it did) and I’m pretty sure even the friends I still have there would really love it if I stopped mentioning the place because I’m embarrassing them. I should’ve stolen some of the old issues of Nintendo Power from the company library when I had the chance.
So, yes, I’m a diehard Nintendo fan. Yes, this makes me biased towards this exact experience. I also own a gaming PC, anXbox, and aPS5so save your emails for somebody whose opinion matters. But Nintendo was where I started and that itself started with the NES. My family got the NES late into its lifecycle when I was three or four. Most of the good games had already come out, and there were a lot of shops nearby that rented out games for next to nothing (weirdly including our local grocery store).
Even though I didn’t understand most of what I was playing at the time - seeing as I couldn’t read and I’d cry at the drop of a hat - they captured my time and my imagination. This was what sucked me into the hobby we all know and love and sometimes don’t love.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Is A Welcome Change From Modern Games
To be fair, I wouldn’t say Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition makes me feel like a kid again. Getting shutdown mid-sentence by the doctor running group therapy makes me feel like a kid again, not playing old games. But it’s so, so nice to have something that’s not just fun in short bursts butultrashort bursts. Usually that sort of joy is saved for WarioWare, Rhythm Heaven, and good games that play on the theme like Spookware, Card Shark, Melatonin, and Rhythm Doctor.
Games that know that I’m anxious and tired and don’t have time for two hours between convenient save locations. Sometimes I want to do something for just five minutes and not have to feel like I haven’t done enough or wasted my time. I like being able to challenge my high score without it being a whole thing.
Do I care about theChampionshippart of it? I dunno. Not really. Since this isn’t a review I’m not required to care about its value for the average consumer. I don’t need to compete against other people to find out how much I suck. I already know. I’ve never really enjoyed competitions unless it was obvious that nobody else cared enough to try: a good lesson for anyone who’s just getting started on their adult life.
Sure, it’s a little fun to do runs against the ghosts of other players’ high scores, but I’m naturally a hermit allergic to human company. I don’t see much of a difference between playing against myself and playing against other people because of my own solipsism.
And, look, it would probably bethe worstif there were too many games doing the same thing as Nintendo World Championships: NES Super Hyper Fighting Edition Turbo: Wings of Liberty. Long gaming experiences have opened up the art form in a way that quick arcade-style games might not have done. Although it would be cool to get something like this fromCapcomorSegaor anybody that I personally like without consideration to others’ preferences.
Whether it’s fair or not, Nintendo has mostly - but not completely - cornered the market on breaking down its old games into other games and then charging dorks like me to buy it again. I know it’s a bit of a quadruple dip. But sometimes you just like hanging out with the guy playing the shell game. He’s taking my money, but it’s nice to have some positive attention.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition
WHERE TO PLAY
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition brings together the competitions of old, with over 150 speedrunning challenges across 13 NES games of yesteryear - from Super Mario Bros. to Metroid.
