Unofficial ‘Nintendo World Championships’ Cart Smashes Kickstarter Goal

An unofficial reproduction of the NES Nintendo World Championships cartridge has been successfully backed via Kickstarter, raising a total of £16,593 at the time of writing with an initial goal of £8,452.

Labelled as a new ‘pro’ version to celebrate the upcoming 35th anniversary of the 1990 World Championships event, it will contain the original version of the cartridge alongside the new pro version. What’s the difference, you might ask? Well, the pro version is more difficult, to put it bluntly.

Unlike the original, in which players started in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros, you’ll instead start in World 8-1. Meanwhile, Rad Racer starts at level 3, while Tetris will start at level 8. You’ll be given the option to set the time limits from 5 minutes all the way up to 15 minutes.

The thing is… it’s ruddy expensive. You’re looking at €140 (£119) for a purple cartridge of the game, while a limited edition gold cartridge (which is already sold out) signed by competitive gamers Robin Mihara and Thor Aackerlund costs a whopping €350 (£296).

Furthermore, we can’t imagine Nintendo itself would be pleased with the endeavour, particularly since it’s about to release Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition on the Switch (an entirely different product, mind, but still). One commenter enquired about the product’s legality and whether Nintendo might block its release, but Mihara responded, “There have been dozens of Nwc repros made and have not been shut down”.

We’ve reached out to creator ‘C4VideoGames’ for further comment.