It's fitting that Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition launched just ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics. Both are focused on competitors shaving fractions of seconds from their best times to emerge victorious, after all. Unlike the Olympics, however, this collection of timed micro-games doesn't require expensive plane tickets to Paris or a lifetime of training; all you need is a Switch and serviceable eye-hand coordination.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is interesting in that it comes from two different lineages. The first and most obvious is the Nintendo World Championships, a nationwide in-person gaming competition sponsored by Nintendo of America and hosted for the first time in 1990. The second is the NES Remix series, which landed on WiiU and 3DS between 2013 & 2015 and which hosted hundreds of speed-running challenges based on beloved NES games. As a result, this new game enjoys the competitive spirit of the former with the variety and volume of the latter.

Volume is certainly the name of the game. The collection includes over 150 challenges spread across 13 NES titles: 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, and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Each challenge is an excerpt from one of the games, which players must complete in a given time. After each attempt, you'll earn a letter grade, coins to unlock additional challenges and, depending on your performance, a commemorative pin. It should take you roughly 90 minutes to complete all challenges at A rank — the threshold to unlock each pin.

Despite that short running time, the issue with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition isn't one of quantity; it's one of quality. Too many of the challenges are unexciting, unmemorable diversions. We're talking four-second missions where you walk left to right, or enter a cave, or jump up a single level. And while it's mildly entertaining to attempt these simple challenges again and again to beat your high score and earn the elusive S rank, it's not enough to sustain an entire game.

Only when the collection presents longer, meatier challenges in the Master category do things get more engaging. But even then it's hard to shake the feeling that your time would be better spent playing the full version of the game. Indeed, the very best of the bunch are Legend challenges, because they come closest to replicating the real McCoy. For example, the Legend challenge for Super Mario Bros., called "Mario Master", asks you to beat the full game in approximately 10 minutes.

What would really enhance the collection is a handful of blended challenges, à la NES Remix, where the rules and mechanics of certain NES games infiltrate others. Instead of collecting a missile pack in Metroid as Samus, how about floating there as Kirby?

Because the majority of challenges aren't worthwhile on their own, it's difficult to recommend Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition solely as a single-player affair. Things improve somewhat when you add more players into the mix, either locally or online. In addition to Speedrun Run (the main solo experience), the game features asynchronous online modes World Championships and Survival Mode, and an eight-player local option called Party Mode.

World Championships is a rotating weekly competition, where you'll speed-run five challenges alongside tens of thousands of other players from around the world. Even more interesting is Survival Mode, in which you face off against ghosts of worldwide players across three rounds. At the end of each round, half of the players are eliminated. There's a fun battle royale-like intensity to the proceedings.

If you'd rather play against people you know, you can boot up Party Mode, a local speed-running contest. As many as eight players can play simultaneously. Like Survival Mode, Party Mode benefits from the inclusion of other challengers. The micro-games themselves aren't great, but the sense of friendly competition raises the stakes and excitement level. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition won't supplant Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., or Mario Party, but it's a decent addition to game night.

Really, it's the social aspect of the game that keeps it afloat. Not only can you compete directly with friends or indirectly with thousands of strangers from around the world, but you can project your personality and show off your spoils in the process. Every time you go online, you share your hype tag, your favorite NES game, your player icon, and your preferred pin (pulled from 183 options). 

Speaking of pins, they look great — as does everything in Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. The presentation overall is immaculate. All the tiles, menus, and interfaces are clean, understandable, and organized, and there's a festive, celebratory vibe throughout.

As for emulation, it appears to be flawless, warts and all. The programmers at Nintendo EPD and indieszero seem to have retained all the eccentricities of the original games, including slowdown and flicker, in order to preserve their unique personalities and difficulties.

In this summer of worldwide sports competition, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition fits right in. Just like the Olympics, it benefits from players from all over the globe challenging each other for the best times and outcomes. Also like the Olympics — unfortunately — it will capture your attention for a couple of weeks and then fade into the background when the next major event takes place. While the social component of the game is strong, the micro challenges that underpin it are ultimately too insignificant to stand the test of time.