Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Player Uses Glitch To Top Donkey Kong Leaderboard

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Donkey Kong
Image: Nintendo

Update [Sat 3rd Aug, 2024 03:30 BST]:

Nintendo recently launched a website in Japan featuring replays of the fastest times in the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition tournaments. The same ‘Donkey Kong Barrel Roll’ replay (which can be seen in the original story below) is notably featured on this page (thanks, OatmealDome). You can also watch this winning run directly in the game.

Original story [Thu 1st Aug, 2024 02:55 BST]:

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition has been out for less than a month on the Switch and it seems we’ve already got our first major tournament scandal. While glitches aren’t actually allowed in this game, it seems a player has used one to top the ladder in the ‘World Championships’ Donkey Kong competition.

The individual with the best run for ‘Donkey Kong Barrel Roll’ (with an ‘S‘ rank and time of 00:15:68) has used the “invisible ladder glitch” to set this leaderboard record. We’ve reviewed the replay in the game and can confirm it’s the winning run.

There’s already a lot of conversation online about this, with one theory suggesting the glitch is within the boundaries of the game compared to certain other glitches, which aren’t permitted. Players have supposedly had mixed results attempting to recreate the “invisible ladder glitch” in this new Switch release, and others claim they’ve successfully replicated it.

You can see this winning run in the video post below (courtesy of ‘MetroidMike64’ on the social media platform X):

So, if you were miles away from this record time and couldn’t work out how someone possibly achieved this run, it was done using the “invisible ladder glitch”. If this is linked directly to Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, maybe Nintendo will roll out a game update in the future to prevent it from happening again.

Nintendo has already released an update for Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition at launch, unlocking ‘Survival Mode’ and also fixing “various issues” to “create a smoother gaming experience”. You can learn more in our previous post, and find out what this game has to offer in our full review here on Nintendo Life.