Background
If you were an NES-loving kid in 1990, you were in luck (considering you were in the USA). Nintendo toured the country with the Nintendo World Championships. The players competed in three different age groups, each going advancing through rigorous game playing sessions and finally, after the semi-finals and the finals, three winners were crowned.

Winners went home with NWC t-shirts, college scholarships, cars, and trips to Nintendo HQ. Lucky finalists got to take home the cart used in competition, and very few lucky Nintendo Power contest winners got to take home gold editions of the competition cart.

The cart consists of three games: Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer, and Tetris. The player must get through all three games in a set time limit (The time limit was 7 minutes for most NWC competitions). When the time has run out, the score from all games will be tabulated and multiplied.

To get through SMB you must get 50 coins. To get through Rad Racer you must pass three checkpoints. You cannot pass Tetris, it is at the very end of the cart to rack up as many points as possible in the time you have left.

Sound
The only original tune on the NWC-exclusive parts of the cart is a beautiful rendidtion of "Grand Old Flag" on the final score tabulation screen. It really gives you the sense that you've accomplished something, even if you really did a terrible job.

All three of these games are from very early in the NES' lifetime, so the music is nothing to write home about. The only game on the cart with memorable music is Tetris, and lord knows it's difficult to forget Tetris' music. I would have appreciated it more to here some nice preparation music on the title screen or in between games at least. The title screen just seems pretty generic with just a non-moving logo and no music at all.

Ya gotta love the nice sound effect when you crash in Rad Racer. Especially if you hear it every twenty seconds like I do. CURSE YOU RAD RACER! CURSE YOU SQUARE! Grrr....

Graphics
From the moment you fire up the cart you're greated by an enormously unimpressive title screen. A static, ugly NWC logo glaring at you on a plain white background. It looks like something Ken Lobb programmed during his lunch break. You get great little motivational "prep screens" before every game that tell you what you need to do, and then remain on screen for ten seconds eating up your precious time.

All these messages are on the same white stars on blue background and don't really dazzle anyone. As stated earlier, all these games are from early in the NES' life, so don't expect great graphics. All three games have incredibly low-tech graphics, as all games from their era should. All games are recreated faithfully and not a single pixel appears to be changed for all your purists out there.

Control
An odd aspect of this cart is the fact that you must press start on controller two to get it started, and then play through the games on controller one. I don't know why things are set up this way, but that doesn't change the fact that it's just plain weird.

Unfortunately, there are no buttons to help you skip through the prep screens and you'll end up starring at them, palms sweating, praying for them to hurry up and let you play the game (well, you won't in your home, but if you were at NWC you would). All the games control as they did in their original incarnations, which is a good thing for some.

I was never happy with Rad Racer's controls (or Rad Racer period for that matter). I dislike having to hit the gas and up again after slowing down after a turn or hitting a car. It gets tiresome after a while trying to maintain your speed.

Gameplay
As noted before, you are given a set time limit in which to get through all three games. You MUST get through SMB and Rad Racer, and then you can spend your remaining time in Tetris. It was the original intention of the designers that players rush through SMB and Rad Racer, leaving all their time to Tetris and racking up extra points.

However, many players (including Howard Phillips), began using the 3-1 SMB 1-up trick to rack up huge numbers of points and then rushing to get through the other games. Many players got far in the championships with this tactic, but in the end Tetris pros won it all.

The gameplay is identical in every game except for the fact that the object in SMB isn't to complete levels but to get 50 coins and you don't need to complete the entire course in Rad Racer.

Challenge
The challenge of this game all depends on many factors. The first factor is how much time you have. You can fiddle with the settings of the game and give yourself more time if you wish. The second factor is how good you are at the games included. If you blow at even one of these games you're at a serious disadvantage.

If you're terrible at Rad Racer (like I am), you're going to eat up way too much time by crashing into poles and trees, living almost no time to rack up big points in Tetris. If you're a well rounded NES player and good at all genres (Racing, platformers, and puzzlers in particular), then you're going to do much better than an NES player great in just one genre.

You've played all these games before, but if you've gotten tired of them then NWC is the perfect way to put some new life in these fossils. The chance of you actually getting the cart is incredibly laughable, so you'll be better off just to find yourself the ROM (NES Triforce doesn't host ROMs kiddies, so don't be askin!) and be happy.

It's obvious it can never be as fun or meaningful as it would have been at the real NWC, but it's still a very big and interesting piece of NES history and definately worth a play if you yourself couldn't go to NWC. Play the game and see if you're the next Lucas Barton.