Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a retro speedrun game coming to Switch in July


Nintendo has officially announced Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition.

Initially spotted last week when it was rated by the ESRB, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is an entirely new game based on the contest of the same name.

The Switch game will be released on July 18 and will cost $29.99.

It will feature 150 speedrunning challenges divided across the following 13 games:

  • 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 II: The Adventure of Link

Players can also take part in the game’s World Championship Mode, where they can take part in weekly rotating challenges – there will be five challenges each week, each with their own online leaderboard. Players will be able to watch replays of the winning times to see how they were achieved.

There will also be a Party Mode for up to eight players locally.

The original Nintendo World Championships took place in the US in 1990 and had players competing on a bespoke cartridge containing challenges for Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer and Tetris. The player with the highest cumulative score across all three games would win.

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Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a retro speedrun game coming to Switch in July

A Nintendo World Championships cartridge was given to finalists and is now consiudered one of the rarest Nintendo cartridges around, worth tens of thousands of dollars.

A physical Deluxe Set edition of the game will also be released on July 18, and will include a physical version of the game, a set of 5 collectible pins, 13 art cards and a replica of the gold cartridge from the 1990 championships.