Nintendo
If you can manage to dig your Wii U out of whatever grave you buried it in, you can load up Super Mario Maker and relive the Nintendo World Championships 2017.
A special level for the game was created by Nintendo Treehouse for this year’s championships, with contestants Cole G, John Numbers, and Thomas G racing to get to the end of the level first. Now you can play the level for yourself. All you have to do is boot up the game, head to the Course World, tap the Toad and select the NWC 2017 level among the list of Event Courses. You can save it to the Course Bot to keep a copy of the level forever and even tweak it to your liking.
Special Super Mario Maker levels were also played during the Nintendo World Championships 2015, and those four courses are also playable in Super Mario Maker. All you have to do to access them is beat all sample courses in the 10 Mario Challenge. If you beat all the NWC 2015 levels, then you’ll unlock the ability to put the Weird Mushroom power up in your levels at will.
Weird Mushrooms turn Mario into a lankier version of himself and gives him higher jump height but lower traction. They normally have a small chance of appearing in place of a regular Super Mushroom when playing Super Mario Bros. style levels.
The Nintendo World Championships is a competition among both invitees and qualifiers playing challenges across a variety of Nintendo games. So far there have only been three, held in 2017, 2015, and 1990. The 1990 championships is especially notable because it led to the creation of two of the rarest and most sought after NES collector’s items ever created, 90 gray cartridges with games from the competition given to finalists after its conclusion and 26 gold cartridges containing the same games given out as prizes for a Nintendo Power magazine contest. The cartridges have each been sold to collectors for around $15,000. Nintendo also held similar competitions including the Nintendo PowerFest ’94, the Nintendo Campus Challenge, and more recently the tournaments during E3 2017.
Check out our interview with NWC 2017 Commentator Jordan Kent by clicking the link below.