Nintendo World Championships
In 1990 Nintendo held a special video game competition. The competition dubbed Nintendo World Championship was based on scoring points in three Nintendo Entertainment System games within a timelimit of six minutes 21 seconds. The competition was based on the movie The Wizard.
Cartridge
For the competition 116 special game cartridges were manufactured. 90 of these copies exist in a grey cartridge and were given out to semi-finalists of the 1990 NWC. 26 of these cartridges are "gold" - like the Legend of Zelda cartridge - and were given out to winners and runners-up in a contest held by Nintendo Power magazine.
The Nintendo World Championship 1990 game cartridge is considered to be the rarest and most valuable NES cartridge released, promo cartridges aside.[1] Recently, a grey cartridge went on eBay and sold for a record $6,100, and a gold cartridge was up for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now purchase price of $20,000. On April 17th, 2007, a gold cartridge was inadvertantly sold by a father who was selling his sons possesions who had died in Iraq on myebid.com. The father was selling 24 cartridges, with no special attention paid to the Nintendo World Championships 1990 cartridge. The collection sold for $21,000 [2]
Games
A player has six minutes 21 seconds to complete the contest, which is divided up into three minigames. The first minigame on this competition cartridge is to collect 50 coins in Super Mario Brothers. The next minigame is a version of Rad Racer, where players must complete a specialized Nintendo World Championship course. The final minigame is Tetris for the remainder of the time left. Once all three minigames are completed, a player's score is totaled using the following formula:
- Super Mario Brothers score
- + Rad Racer score times 10
- + Tetris score times 25
Most players focused their tactic on getting a highscore in Tetris, other players tried to exploit a trick in Super Mario Brothers where a part of the game can be played repeatedly using warp pipes.
Results
The eventual winner of the Nintendo World Championship was Jeff Hansen, [2], who also defeated Japanese champion Yuichi Suyama in 1992 [3] (in Tokyo) and in 1993 [4] (at the Consumer Electronics Show in the United States), thereby remaining the World Champion through that year. He has stated that he practiced video games eight hours a day during his competitive gaming years. [5] In 2002, he publicly stated his belief that videogaming should be an Olympic sport. [6]
Hansen would go on to attend Brigham Young University and serve as a Mormon missionary in Japan. [7] He still maintains a somewhat legendary status among videogame fans of his generation who recall his accomplishment.
Additional Nintendo World Championships
Nintendo held one other Nintendo World Championship event know as Nintendo PowerFest '94 also called Nintendo World Championships II.
References
External links
- Nintendo World Championship at MobyGames
- Nespit A cartridge owner's website
- AtariHQ has an in-depth look at Nintendo World Championship as well as playing tactics and screen shots.
- The Warp Zone A site with a lot of information about the event instead of the cartridge.