Nintendo World Championships turned me into a Super Mario Bros. god

The newly releasedNintendo World Championships: NES Edition is all about mastery. The retro microgame collection takes 13 NES classics and breaks them down into bite-sized speedrunning challenges that beg players to replay them over and over to lower their best time. That process all leads to the package’s big event, the titular Nintendo World Championships. Every week, players all submit their best times for five specific challenges and fight for a top ranking come Monday morning.

I had no idea how I’d fare against hundreds of thousands of people in the game’s first week. While I’d been sharpening my skills during the review period for the game, I still didn’t have much confidence that I could make a splash in games like Super Mario Bros. that have been mapped out to perfection already.

It turns out I’m much better at Mario than I thought. And that’s a testament to what a powerful coach Nintendo World Championships is.

Taking on 1-1

For its maiden voyage, Nintendo World Championships started players off with some easy challenges. They’d have to get the first mushroom in Super Mario Bros. as fast as possible, complete a vertical platforming sequence in Metroid, beat a short stretch of Super Mario Bros. 2, and quickly kill some bats in The Legend of Zelda. The hardest challenge, though, was more involved: beating World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. as fast as possible.

Players have a lot of time to up their game. A new tournament starts every Monday and ends the following one. In that time, players can keep trying to set new scores as many times as possible and can submit their best ones up until the tournament ends. There’s no real reward for doing so outside of getting a high spot on a weekly leaderboard, but there was a prize that the completionist in me needed: a profile badge only earned by placing in the top 20% of a tournament. The fight was on.

While I was able to snag S-ranks in Zelda and Metroid with ease, the Mario games posed a challenge. I love the series,