Nintendo World Championships set to return
Golden Joysticks and cartridges for everyone!
It's the news you've undoubtedly all been waiting for -- Nintendo have decided to run another World Championships event in 2017! The world's foremost players of Nintendo games will all come together for a clash of the titans, playing various games -- most of which, we can presume, will be games made by Nintendo. It's all set to go down on October 7th at the Grand Ballroom in Manhattan Center, New York City -- host of such legendary events as the first episode of WWF Monday Night RAW in 1993 -- with qualifying events happening in Best Buys all across the country.
The original Nintendo World Championships took place in 1990 -- an event throughout almost the whole year that took in 29 separate city championships, with each champion winning a trip to the Finals at Universal Studios Hollywood. Ultimately the grand prize of a $10,000 bond, car, TV and trophy was won by three people in their age groups -- Jeff Hansen, Thor Aackerlund and Robert Whiteman, all of whom proved their skills on a special cartridge featuring timed versions of Super Mario Bros. 3, Rad Racer, and Tetris. On the occasion of the NWC's 25th anniversary, Nintendo resurrected the event at E3 2015, where the relatively unknown John Numbers bested speedrunner Narcissa Wright in a final made up of particularly difficult Super Mario Maker levels, winning a trophy from Shigeru Miyamoto and an autographed Nintendo 3DS XL. Following the success of NWC's revival, it makes sense for Nintendo to bring it back again.
While no one knows what games the final will consist of, details on the Best Buy qualifiers are as follows: They start from August and will consist of two separate age groups both competing on a number of tracks from Mario Kart 7 -- the top times from each group will qualify for the final event in NYC. Nintendo are also using this as an opportunity to promote two of their most anticipated new titles -- both Super Mario Odyssey and Metroid: Samus Returns will be available to play at the qualifying events in demo form. There will be 8 qualifying events across the U.S.A from August 19th to September 10th, and admission is on a "first come, first served" basis -- if you wanna be in it, you've got to take yourself over there.
It's not difficult to see why Nintendo are doing this really, or to see any real way it could be a bad thing -- while the original Nintendo World Championships were a one-off event, competitive gaming is a big deal these days, and so it makes sense for Nintendo to run this again -- whether it's a bi-annual or annual event going forward remains to be seen, but it'll certainly pull a big audience online because...well, it's Nintendo and they're kind of a big name, in case you didn't know. Anyone who is interested in taking part or perhaps getting tickets for the big final itself should keep their eyes on nwc.nintendo.com for more information in the coming weeks.
