“Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition” is a collection of mini-games for masochists

In an industry littered with remakes, remasters and re-releases, few companies have mastered the art of repackaging leftovers for a nostalgic appetite from Nintendo. With games like the 1985 NES classic Super Mario Bros. re-released dozens of times over four decades, even younger gamers are familiar with the look, feel and core gameplay of Nintendo's classics.

With such a legacy, Nintendo doesn't really have to try hard to sell its back catalog and with its latest collection, Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition, it certainly isn't. Instead, the Japanese developer leans towards a more tasteful approach to retro gameplay designed to appeal to speed-obsessed masochists and those with decidedly short attention spans.

Nintendo World Championship it doesn't provide access to full NES games, but cuts the 8-bit titles into short sprints that focus on specific objectives that must be beaten at breakneck speed. It's essentially a homemade recreation of the 1989 film's highlights The magicianwhere a young gaming connoisseur (Fred Savage) competes in a public tournament to master the then-unreleased Super Mario Bros. 3. Here, it's your shot to play the lead and set a world record for crowd cheers (literally, it's a sound effect used in the game).

The pack itself is essentially a collection of mini-games consisting of game snippets such as Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kongand Metroid boiled down to hyper-specific missions to complete in a time-scoring attack. To say they are short would be an understatement, as some trials are as simple as picking the first super mushroom in Super Mario Bros.' first stage, a feat that lasts about five seconds. Others are as simple as walking into a door in the original Legend of Zelda. There are goals that literally take about a second to beat.

Beyond tying the player's hands to keep most of the actual gameplay from the classic games, the collection's true intent is to train you in the art of speedrunning. Selecting a test starts a tutorial that shows the best way to complete the assigned task. Follow the instructions to a tee and you'll score well. Fail and you'll need to repeat. You will do it a lot.

Basic single-player speedrunning is the equivalent of constantly restarting a section of the game, racing your own ghost on an adjacent screen that replays your best run. stream 13 titles that include the original Super Mario Bros. trilogy (and The lost levels), two Zelda, Child Icarus, and more, there are about 156 tests in total. The game ramps up the difficulty as it trains your brain to execute pixel-perfect runs in early sessions, while master or legendary level missions are essentially the equivalent of completing a full level flawlessly. That's it, that's the game. But that doesn't make it easy.

Its most interesting aspect Nintendo World Championship it doesn't show the elegance of Nintendo's best, but rather reminds older players or educates new ones about how archaic some of these games can be. Gamers raised on modern iterations of Nintendo IP are likely to be horrified by how some of the original outings work mechanically. After ten failures in two minutes of playing Kirby's Adventureyou will scream, “This how did kirby play?'

Without the freedom to learn the individual quirks of each game at their own pace, players are forced to learn through a repeated trial by fire. For those willing to deal with the frustration, it can be rewarding, but many will be surprised by how much they think they know about these games before the harsh reality hits. But when muscle memory kicks in during a particularly grueling stretch of it Ice Climbersthere's a new satisfaction — before you're finally forced to move on to something else.

Aside from banging your head against the wall to replace your best score by a few milliseconds, you can find a more subtle enjoyment in multiplayer, where other people's failures can be your saving grace.

At launch, there are two online multiplayer modes that boost the competitive spirit beyond the basic auto-whipping. The “World Championship” is a series of five weekly tests to improve for a world high score. If you've already cut your teeth on the single-player speedrun mode, it's a good way to test your skills by repeatedly clocking your best times to rank against others around the world. But it is the second online mode that is actually much more addictive.

“Survival Mode” pits eight players in a three-round knockout competition through the game's various challenges. Going into battle, you'll need to share an eight-way split screen with other players who are all fighting to achieve the same goal, but the results are much more exciting than going it alone. In the early pre-launch period, only a few hundred players were online, but the battles for survival were fierce when a single mistake could lead to a knockout.

Without the safety net of constant restarts, flawlessly navigating a particularly difficult challenge while watching others tumble down your periphery can be exhilarating. It's especially rewarding to see the random tests feature a game you're especially good at, putting an advantageous fire in your eyes for the final showdown. Everyone knows them inside and out The Legend of Zeldabut seeing your enemies fall one by one down the mountain Ice Climbers it's a guilty pleasure.

Local multiplayer is also supported in the game's “Party Mode”, which can play with up to eight people. Like “Survival Mode”, it presents a series of challenges to complete melee, albeit without the strictest knockout mechanics. Grouped into packs that have specific themes, such as “Short & Sweet” or “Technical Finesse,” the game's tracks are divided in ways that allow friends to choose the ones that best fit the mood without necessarily leaving anyone uninitiated ( unless that's the cruel joke between your buds). Packs can also be quick sessions, most lasting from three to 10 minutes and the most durable run at 20 minutes.

It's hard to say what longevity is for a game Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition, especially without knowing what, if any, updates there will be to add in new content. It's hard to tell who the game is aimed at. Chopping retro games into seconds-long chunks could be an attempt to capture the attention of the TikTok generation, or it could focus on evoking nostalgia for an older crowd with less time on their hands to revisit childhood classics .

Being on the Switch, it has the appealing appeal of microgame collections like the WarioWare series — especially in handheld mode — but for anyone not interested in endless time trials and self-inflicted frustration, there are plenty of better ways to play these games in their entirety. If you already have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, which is required to play Nintendo World Championship with others on the Internet, you already have access to everything through the custom NES app. This will save you $30. But if your idea of ​​a good time is hard-earned perfectionism, as your inner monologue shouts, “Faster” in a retro gaming fantasy Whippingthen this is your weird fantasy fulfilled.