A new first-party Switch game just leaked thanks to an ESRB rating, and it sounds like a spiritual successor to one of the best hidden gems Nintendo built for the sadly deceased Wii U.
That game is Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, which recently popped up on the ESRB rating site. "This is a collection of 2D challenges and platformer games in which players traverse through various modes (e.g., speedrun, survival)," the description explains. "Several challenges involve reaching specific points, while others prompt players to defeat small enemies or survive brief battles. Some games depict pixelated characters using small swords or arrows to strike at enemies; enemies typically get stunned or disappear in a flash."
The name 'Nintendo World Championships' goes all the way back to a very early esports event the publisher held in 1990, where players would compete on custom cartridges featuring versions of Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer, and Tetris that had been modified for competition. The original Nintendo World Championships cartridges are among the rarest video games ever manufactured.
The ESRB description - where you play through various brief challenges with certain goals - sounds a whole lot like NES Remix, a series with three entries released across Wii U and 3DS. Each title included a selection of classic NES games that had been 'remixed' into various minigame challenges, sort of like meatier versions of the retro microgames in the WarioWare series. NES Remix 2 also featured a mode called Nintendo World Championship Remix, which offered a special selection of challenges with online leaderboards attached.
NES Remix remains one of my favorite first-party Nintendo oddities - it's one of the best hidden gems the publisher has ever put out, and it was a particular highlight in the otherwise thin Wii U library. It's also one of the few great Wii U games that never got a sequel or port on Switch, and if Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is indeed the follow-up it seems to be, I'm thrilled that the concept is getting a second chance.
Hopefully we'll see a fair few of the best NES games as part of this new release.
