[AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Ones is a series dedicated to talking about games that I find myself revisiting often, ones out of thousands of choices.]
When Nintendo revealed Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition in May of 2024, I was incredibly excited. I’ve long had a fascination with the 1990 version of the Nintendo World Championships, having played the game (and been pretty terrible at it) for quite some time. I had also enjoyed Ultimate NES Remix on the 3DS– which will probably get its own due here down the line– so this seemed to merge the ideas together. The idea of competing against other players to see who the “best” is called out to me.
When the game landed in the summer of 2024, I was all in. I bought it digitally. I bought the Deluxe Edition to have the extra NWC-related trinkets, like pins and a replica gold NWC cartridge. I played it for hours, zooming through challenges and trying to best my times. The initial rush was awesome. Then, the rush turned to a “That’s it?” kind of feeling. It felt like there were fewer challenges and less content than in Ultimate NES Remix. The allure of improving on my best efforts wore thin. Worse, competing against other players’ efforts posted online felt like a lost cause. My results were consistently awful.
Had I fallen prey to NEStalgia? Was I more interested in the “retro” nature of the game, rather than what the game really had to offer? For more than a year, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition was a footnote. It stayed installed on my Switch because the data footprint was small, but I wasn’t playing it. I thought I’d had my fun and that was that.
I came back to it in late 2025, to check out the weekly World Championship challenges. Completing them usually takes 10-15 minutes, unless replays occur to improve your best efforts. The difference was that I stopped caring about where I stood each week on the leaderboards and instead just did the best I could. A one-off play became a couple of weeks, then a weekly routine. I fell in love with the game all over again, but for different reasons.
As someone who constantly zooms from game to game to game, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is perfect because it doesn’t wear out its time. 15-20 minutes, once (or twice) a week, testing my skills feels similar to an arcade game. Instead of points, it’s best times– like a racing game. Most of the time, my efforts fall in the bottom half of the leaderboards. Every so often, I’ll get an S rank and surprise myself a bit in terms of the standings… but if I don’t, it really doesn’t bother me too much. The rotating sets of challenges Nintendo uses from week to week keeps things fresh, and I could practice them if I wanted to before competing… though I usually just keep trying each challenge in competition mode until I log what I think my best effort can be.
Playing this game isn’t something I schedule or force myself to do. It’s become an enjoyable weekly routine, and it’s helped to generate more value from the game than I initially thought it had back in 2024. While I would’ve liked to have seen some additional games and challenges via DLC, I’ve come to be satisfied with what’s here: retro goodNESs with a little bit of competition and a focus on skill.
Pete's Perspective 
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