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New retro themed Switch game is good news for the Nintendo Direct-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition has been officially announced and that means it’s not going to be a major part of the June Direct.
This means Nintendo has more secrets for June (Nintendo)
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition has been officially announced and that means it’s not going to be a major part of the June Direct.
Although we don’t know the exact date yet, Nintendo is planning to have its traditional not-E3 showcase in June. They made it clear earlier in the week that it would not discuss their new console, which leaves it a mystery as to what the Nintendo Direct will talk about.
It’s widely believed the Switch 2 was delayed into 2025, and was originally intended to be out this year, but either way Nintendo has nothing announced beyond June at the moment and the only announced titles without a release date are Metroid Prime 4 and next year’s Pokémon Legends Z-A.
Hopefully both will be featured but it’s been assumed that most of the rest of the running time will be filled with remasters and smaller titles, especially after one of them leaked via an age rating listing. But, surprisingly, Nintendo has gone ahead and announced Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition this week.
As assumed, the game seems to be a spiritual successor to the two NES Remix Wii U games, in that it repackages a bunch of old NES titles so that instead of playing them normally you’re trying to complete speedrunning inspired competitions.
The peculiar name is a reference to an in-person tournament that Nintendo (very) occasionally runs in the US, with the idea being that now you compete in a similar manner from the safety of your home. Although while there’s an up to eight-person local multiplayer mode there don’t seem to be any online options beyond leaderboards and weekly challenges.
The game boasts ‘over 150 challenges’ across 13 different NES games and it’ll be released on July 18, priced at a sensibly low £24.99.
The 13 games are all first party titles, namely: 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 2: The Adventure Of Link.
The game is what it is, so it’ll already be pretty obvious to you whether you’re interested in it or not, although the deluxe physical set certainly looks coo;, with a gold-coloured homage to the original Nintendo World Championships 1990 NES cartridge – which is one of the rarest and most valuable on the console.
You also get five collectable pin badges and 13 art cards, one for each game, for £49.99. Oh, and content warning on the two trailers, as they insist on pronouncing it N.E.S. instead of ‘Nez’.
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Clearly this is a minor release for Nintendo, but announcing it now gets it out of the way before June. So while it’ll probably be briefly mentioned during the Nintendo Direct, because it still won’t be out by then, it shouldn’t be a major focus.
It’s not clear what will be, but Nintendo must be planning something for Christmas, considering they’ve still got ambitious sales targets for the Switch this year. But there’s good reason to hope it’s something more substantial than Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition.
Unless it’s just Nintendo World Championships: SNES Edition.
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