Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition announced for Switch with ‘over 150 challenges from 13 NES games’

Following last week’s ratings board sighting, Nintendo has officially unveiled Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, which promises “over 150 challenges from across 13 different NES games” when it launches on 18th July.

While last week’s ESRB listing suggested we might be looking at some sort of NES Remix revival – and that game’s spirited does at least seem to be partially reflected in Nintendo’s latest release – today’s official reveal points to something a little narrower in focus.

As per Nintendo’s announcement, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is specifically concerned with speedrunning, featuring 150 “byte-sized” challenges that can be tackled across several modes. Alongside the single-player Speedrun Mode, which features new challenges and pins to unlock, there’s World Championships Mode – where players compete for a spot on the global online leaderboards – plus a speedruning Party Mode for up to eight local players.

Challenges span 13 classic NES games – as listed immediately below this paragraph – and Nintendo is touting an automatic rewind feature, so players “don’t need to master entire games to feel like a Nintendo World Champion”.

• Balloon Fight
• Donkey Kong
• Excitebike
• Ice Climber
• Kid Icarus
• Kirby’s Adventure
• Metroid
• Super Mario Bros.
• Super Mario Bros. 2
• Super Mario Bros. 3
• Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels
• The Legend of Zelda
• Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition will be available digitally for £24.99 via Switch’s eShop on 18th July, and a £49.99 physical Deluxe Set releases at the same time. The latter includes a physical version of the game, fives collectible pins, 13 art cards featuring covers from the included NES games, plus a replica of the gold-coloured NES Game Pak commemorating the original 1990 Nintendo World Championships event.