Nintendo’s speedrunning collection made me see NES classics in a new way

There are few things I know better than Super Mario Bros. 3. Over the last few decades, I’ve replayed the game across basically every Nintendo platform, exploring its levels over and over, searching out each and every secret. But there’s one thing I never paid attention to: the timer. I’ve always taken a slow, methodical approach to the game, ignoring the tiny countdown clock. That changed with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, a collection of NES classics that have been chopped into pieces in the interest of pure speed. It showed me a new side to games I thought I knew intimately.

Named after Nintendo’s occasional in-person esports competition, the collection takes 13 of the company’s most iconic titles and divides them into…

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