Let’s talk about speed.
As someone who has been excited about Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition since its initial leak and subsequent announcement, Iām probably exactly the target audience for this game. Born in 1979, my formative grade school and middle school years were defined by playing these NES games and quite frankly, Iāve never stopped. A year hasnāt gone by without me replaying NES Metroid and Zelda games since they were initially released. I spent the summer of 2021 learning to speed-run Metroid, and have had multiple randomizer challenges with both of those games – including some that combine them.
Now that the game is released, Iāve gotten the S-Rank in each challenge and seen all that the game has to offer. The narrative Iāve seen on social media and heard in podcasts is that the game is not fully featured, and lacks basic online competitive features such as leaderboards. In this I fully agree; the game is lacking these features and itās worse for it. Iām not in the business of reviewing games anymore, but if I were, this game loses several points for whiffing on its goal of instilling a spirit of competition amongst your online friends.
The other narrative Iāve seen, however, is that this game is just a worse version of NES Remix, and in that I actually canāt agree. After finishing all of the challenges in NWC: NES Edition, I picked up my 3DS and revisited NES Remix Ultimate, and watched some online footage of NES Remix for Wii U, and the conclusion Iāve come to is that comparing NWC: NES Edition directly to NES Remix doesnāt do justice to the things that NWC does incredibly well.
At its core, NWC: NES Edition is a game that celebrates speedrunning in a way that Nintendo doesnāt often acknowledge. Speedrunning is often something that Nintendo leaves to the community as it represents playing a game in a way that Nintendo hasnāt necessarily intended, and Nintendo is nothing if not super into controlling the gameplay experience. Seeing Nintendo embrace speedrunning in a way like this is refreshing, and shows a self-awareness we donāt see from them very often. Does it feel half-hearted when they tell you that using the pipes in Super Mario Bros. 1-1 is not allowed? Sure, Iād hear that argument. Nonetheless, itās very interesting to see Nintendoās perspective on the speedrunning experience, combining years of community engagement with authorial intent.
The primary way in which NWC: NES Edition embraces speedrunning is through the use of ghost data. Itās possible that NES Remix has ghost data, I donāt remember. What I can say, having revisited the 3DS version after completing all the challenges in NWC is that the ghost data is not presented right next to you when youāre playing the challenges. The spirit of NWC is speedrunning, and if thatās what youāre interested in, NWC wipes the floor with NES Remix. The presentation, the timer, and most importantly, the presence of your personal best ghost data alongside your playthrough in the single player challenge mode gives you something to race against every time you play, helping you understand where you can gain time, and where youāve struggled. Itās a major quality-of-life feature for speedrunning that NES Remix doesnāt really mess around with, because NES Remix is not about speedrunning.
I wonāt argue that NWC is lacking in game variety, and I wonāt argue that NES Remix doesnāt have more interesting challenges. I simply think that trying to insist that we would be better served by putting NES Remix on Switch fails to understand the things that NWC: NES Edition does very well. I lost interest in completing all the challenges in NES Remix after a while because it didnāt feel like there was incentive to get better at them. In NWC: NES Edition, thereās always a race to be had, even if itās just against myself.
