ESRB Rating For Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Appears Out Of Nowhere

Nintendo’s release schedule for the remainder of 2024 is a major unknown; other than remakes of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (May 23) and Luigi’s Mansion 2 (June 27), there are no first-party titles announced by Nintendo for release this year. A new ESRB rating might hint at an upcoming reveal, as a listing for Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition has appeared on the ratings board’s website.

The ESRB listing calls Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition a “collection of 2D challenges and platformer games in which players traverse through various modes (e.g., speedrun, survival).” These modes will incorporate various challenges including reaching certain areas or battling groups of enemies, among others, according to the ESRB description.

Some speculated that the tease could have been an imminent return for the in-person event after known Nintendo leaker Pyoro posted an image of the Nintendo World Championships 1990 NES cartridge on Twitter. Per VGC, the ESRB description instead implies that a new game is coming rather than a port of the old cartridge.

The original Nintendo World Championships 1990 game was a similar collection of minigames featuring Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer, and Tetris, which was used during the competition of the same name. Two versions of the cartridge exist–a gray version which was distributed to some competitors in the event, and a gold version which was given as a prize to readers of Nintendo Power magazine.

Nintendo’s immediate future has been a major question for its fan base since the beginning of the year, as rumors of the company’s next home console have circulated for a majority of 2024. Most recently, reports surfaced that the console was internally delayed by Nintendo until 2025 in the hopes of avoiding supply issues on launch day.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition has not been officially announced as of this writing. Meanwhile, a recent Heritage Auctions listing says that the original 1990 cartridge sold for $84,000. Hopefully this new game, when announced, doesn’t cost the same price.