NES games are difficult to revisit. They’re easy to find and play, but they are showing their age and have been for some time. To play the original Legend of Zelda, for example, rewards a difficult-to-control, often obtuse puzzle game whose importance to the industry is undeniable, but its contemporary fun factor is low. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition counters this with a strategy that WarioWare has been using to great effect since its inception: you only play classic Nintendo games for exactly as long as they’re fun – which in 2024 is anywhere from three seconds to a few minutes. The result is a game that lets you challenge yourself and experience the highlights of Nintendo’s ‘80s library without much need for commitment, but it’s not without its annoyances.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition features a few modes, but they’re all built off the Speedrun Mode. In it, you play through a series of challenges that, at its lowest levels, force you to jump on a platform in Ice Climbers, to its highest levels, which might task you with beating a full dungeon in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link as fast as possible. Each of the 13 games has a handful of short challenges that range in difficulty. This is where I had the most fun, defeating a number of microgames based on a series of titles that most people probably only know for their appearances in Super Smash Bros.
