In brief: The Entertainment Software Ratings Board has published a listing for what appears to be a new version of the legendary Nintendo World Championships collection of minigames. The ESBR listing is for a Switch version of a title called Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, and has been stamped with an E for Everyone rating due to mild fantasy violence.
Per the summary, the title features a collection of 2D challenges and platformer games in which players will compete in a variety of modes including survival and speedrunning.
Some challenges involve hitting specific points goals, the ESRB said, while others require gamers to defeat enemies or participate in battles. The listing notes that some games depict characters using swords or arrows to strike enemies, none of which were found in the original Nintendo World Championships – again, pointing to this being an entirely new game collection.
The first Nintendo World Championships was a nationwide competition hosted in 1990. Participants from across the country competed for the highest score possible on a custom game cartridge featuring a series of minigames based on Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer, and Tetris. Players with the highest score at the end of each six minute and 21 second run would advance to the next stage of the competition. Ultimately, winners were recognized across three age categories.
The top 90 finalists were each given a copy of the custom grey NES cartridge used in competition, while winners of a Nintendo Power magazine contest received golden versions of the cart. Due to their extremely limited production run, both versions are among the most sought after NES games in existence.
Nintendo revived the competition in 2015 and again in 2017, but neither had the same appeal as the original.
Nintendo experimented with a similar series of minigames called NES Remix for the Wii U in the first half of the 2010s. Perhaps the new Nintendo World Championships series will be similar to those, and could even span multiple platform generations.
