Nintendo World Championships might be my favorite multiplayer game in years, but the improvements for a potential sequel are obvious
Ahead of a Nintendo World Championship: SNES Edition, say, Nintendo has got its hooks in me - but there is certainly room for improvement.
When I first saw Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, I didn’t think too highly of it. I thought it looked cheap, like a nostalgia-needling cash-grab. I thought that it seemed cynical. In hindsight, perhaps I am the cynical one for thinking that way: as detailed in my earlier preview of the retro package, there’s a lot more to it than first meets the eye.
Criticisms I initially had, like being annoyed that the package didn’t include the full versions of the NES games it featured, quickly melted away. It becomes clear that stuff isn’t included because it would be a distraction, in a way: this is a game about tiny challenges where every millisecond counts - not playing Zelda 1 start-to-finish. With that said, it’s obviously not entirely magnanimous on Nintendo’s part - these same games are available on Nintendo Switch Online, and they’d rather you to pay for a subscription. But my point is, the package doesn’t feel incomplete.
Where NWC: NES Edition feels lacking, I suppose, is in the online element. You can see how the time trial nature and the multiplayer modes could really soar online and become a viral sensation, at least among those of us hurtling towards middle-aged desperate to show off our skills in 40-year-old games. Strangely, online is relatively anemic in this title. It’s come in for much criticism from critics for that, and it is deserved. It’s strange that even the leaderboarding is inferior to even something like Super Mario Maker.
A single mode offers the ability to play more ‘directly’ against other players, with you left to compete against the ghost data of records set by other real players, which then gets beamed down to you over the internet. That’s nice to have - but it’s a tantalizing, annoying glimpse of what this game could’ve been with more proper online hooks… which it doesn’t have.
In a game like this, I shouldn’t be seeing friendly rivalries primarily prosecuted via screenshots posted to social media and forums. God, that’s how I matched up to friends in high score challenges in Star Fox 64 - which was twenty-seven years ago. So that stuff is unacceptable. But… hear me out for a second… paradoxically, I’ve sort of accepted it. I’m sort of okay with it.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is about the retro. It’s channeling the memory and energy of in-person championship events from the nineties. One might argue that, with its meager online capabilities, it’s a little bit too retro. But like going camping, or staying in some old, creaky house without all the modern amenities… there is nevertheless a charm.
All of the charm here is in this as a local multiplayer game. I’ve now had the chance to play this with friends a couple of times - and it’s brilliant. Thrilling. There aren’t many games - I genuinely can’t think of one beyond Smash Bros - that actually makes connecting a full eight controllers to the Nintendo Switch worthwhile. But dammit, this is one of them.
You’ll be crowded around a screen, each of you zeroed in on your own little mini screen, eyes rapidly flickering back and forth to the screens of your rivals to see if you’re ahead, behind, or neck-and-neck. We started to make our own rules to gradually eliminate people from the competition. There’ll be yelling. Maybe a bit of jostling. Certainly, tensioned shrieks and hands running through hair (or, given the age of the target audience, over bald heads) in frustration at it all.
It’s brilliant. It actually most reminds me of Mario Party, but it sort of does away with the bit of Mario Party that is a bit hit-or-miss for me - the board game stuff. Here it’s all action, with each mini-game, each challenge, each action having an immediately felt consequence. Quickly we realized its potential. Quicker still, drinking rules were drafted. And all of this… it wouldn’t quite exist, not in the same way, online.
That is why Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is one of my favorite new multiplayer games in years, right up there with stuff like Gang Beasts, Ultimate Chicken Horse, and Street Fighter 6.
Nintendo deserves the criticism for the lacking features nevertheless. But for £25, if you can get your mates together in the same room… it’ll be one of the best experiences you’ll have all year. That’s undeniable. Here’s hoping that if a SNES version materializes, the other features are present too - which might just make it unstoppably good.