Esports for old folks: Nintendo turns classic games into bite-sized challenges

Speedrunning, where parts of video games are completed under certain conditions as quickly as possible, has become a phenomenon as a spectator sport. But there’s something very specifically satisfying about actually trying it yourself, looking at the strategies of others and working out spots where you could be more efficient to shave just a few milliseconds off your time.

It’s a very streamlined take on this experience that makes up the most enjoyable part of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, a new Switch game that taps into speedrun culture, esports and classic games of the ’80s and ’90s to create a unique and party-friendly competition in which people of any age and experience can compete.

Over the years Nintendo has constantly referenced, remixed and republished the 8-bit games of its NES console, including at the 1990 Nintendo World Championships (a USA-only event despite the name) from which this newest celebration takes its name and logo. People who were 20 when some of these games came out would be around 60 now, and yet kids are also familiar with them thanks to Nintendo currently being at the height of its popularity.

Where NWS: NES Edition falls down slightly is in its near-total focus on speedrun challenges. Some aesthetic touches speak to the wider cultural impact of these games, and there’s a good balance between indulging in nostalgia and introducing these old favourites to newcomers, but if you don’t like racing and precision you might feel a bit left out of the fun.

Practice makes perfect

The game contains more than 150 challenges, taken from across 13 different games. A solo Speedrun Mode lets you unlock and tackle them all as they explore each game’s setup and gradually ramp up in difficulty.

For the original Super Mario Bros, the first challenge is simply to get a Super Mushroom. You can watch a demo of how it’s done, and the game tells you which button is dash and which is jump. If you get hit by the goomba or run too far you don’t fail, the game rewinds you, which serves as both a lesson and a slight time penalty. Your first attempt to get the mushroom might take 10 seconds, for which you’d be rewarded a B+. But you can instantly restart to try again until you shave it down to around four seconds for an A++, or faster for an S-rank (which is the highest possible).

Eventually, you face a Legend-level challenge, which for each game is presented alongside a ’90s-style print article with tips on how to beat it. For Mario, it’s completing the entire game using the warp pipe shortcuts, which takes around eight minutes. Again, any “death” is rewound so it’s not as tough as in the real game, but getting an S-rank will take practice.

Outside of the four Mario games, which are comparatively pure for speedrunning because of their predictability and repeatability, the games are quite diverse. Zelda and Zelda II, for example, put a focus on tight combat, while Metroid is all about managing jumps. Kirby’s Adventure is a wonderful game that’s explicitly designed for slow and breezy play, which makes for something of a frustrating speedrunning challenge, while some of the inclusions (Kid Icarus, Ice Climber, Balloon Fight) are so fiddly or random that I had to give up on my quest to get all A-ranks or above. For now.

These Switch-compatible NES controllers are expensive but feel exactly like the 1980s originals.Credit: Tim Biggs

Compounding the difficulty for some will be that the Joy-Con controllers included with the Switch console are a poor substitute for the hyper-precise NES pads. You want big buttons and preferably a D-pad, so the official Pro controller is a good option, but the best choice is the NES controller Nintendo, which sells for $90 a pair.

The other offline option is Party Mode, where up to eight people can compete simultaneously on the one TV. You can choose any challenge in the game, and there are also curated playlists to go through rapid-fire.

I’ve had a lot of fun playing this mode with other retro fans, and I gave it to a group of four- to seven-year-olds at a playdate and they loved it. The group has the option to practice each round first, and the scoring is such that things even out if you’re good at one game and bad at another. Yet I’m not sure how many times you could play it before it got old, and if there’s one person in the group who’s much more skilled than the rest it will suck the fun right out.

Taking on the world

The remaining two modes are all about online competition but, since this is Nintendo, things are a bit different to other competitive online games.

You first have to set up a boastful profile, and I love how kitschy it is. Playing more lets you unlock pixel-heavy profile pictures and trophy pins, which you attach to your profile, along with one of a few dozen “hype tags” and a pick for your favourite game. Nintendo has provided a list of hundreds of NES and (Japanese) Famicom games to choose from, so your favourite will be here.

Different challenges are featured every week, and in World Championships you simply pick one and post your best score. You can try as many times as you like during the week, after which you’ll see a ceremony showing your place in the overall contest, and an idea of how you did among other players with your birth year.

As you’d expect, the competition at the high end is extremely tight. The first world championship included a challenge to complete the first level of Super Mario Bros. The overall winner had a time of 21.11 seconds, whereas my personal best of only .05 slower ranked me at number 363. You can watch a replay of the winner’s run, but at that point it’s a bit late to be getting pointers.

The other competitive mode is Survival, which simulates a knock-out tournament of three rounds. The game downloads seven runs completed by other players around the world, and you race against them as though you’re all playing at the same time. It’s a really fun mode with an element of luck, since you’re paired with different people and the order of the events changes each time. If the event you’re worse at comes up first, you’re in with a better chance, as you only have to finish fourth to move on.

Room to improve

For all its cheerful fanfare, and as much as I’ve enjoyed competing over the first week, I can’t help thinking of all the ways the package could be made more engaging and complete. Why can’t I see how the people on my friends list have done at the various challenges and compete with them directly? Shouldn’t there be permanent leaderboards for each mission with replays, so I can learn from the best? Doesn’t a daily challenge make sense in addition to weekly? On a more philosophical level, the game would obviously benefit from a widening of the pool to include a few games not originally published by Nintendo. Tetris, Mega Man and Castlevania all come to mind.

There’s something about how this game integrates with Nintendo’s wider paid subscription service that doesn’t seem right to me as well. It’s a $50 game, and a $30 annual subscription is required to access the online modes (which is most of the fun once you’ve played each challenge yourself).

Full versions of the 13 NES games are not included in Nintendo World Championships, but they are included with Nintendo Switch Online via the downloadable NES app. So in a way what you’re getting here is a $50 speedrunning mode for games you’re already paying for, with no guarantee of how long the online competitions will last.

Still, I look forward to revisiting the challenges each week in an attempt to master each championship. And if nothing else, the gentle hand-holding of the challenges will make for a much nicer way to introduce new people to some of these games then simply starting them from the start.

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