Switch players simply don’t understand why Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is missing this crucial feature

Do you actually kinda dislike your friends? Well, the bad news is that the freshly released Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition doesn’t facilitate the destruction of these bonds via a heated battle to claim the best time for the first level of Super Mario Bros quite as easily as it could, and as a lot of players were expecting.

Since the game is based around speedrunning parts of different classic NES games via a whole bunch of challenges, leaderboards that catalogue the times folks are recording — so that you can drive yourself mad trying to outdo some dude named Tim who’s so good at Kirby’s Adventure you’re 99% convinced he’s cheating — seem like they’d naturally be a pretty huge part of the experience. However, it seems like that’s not the case.

Now, before we wander into the complaints from people who probably listen to the DK rap on a daily basis (as one should, it’s a cultural touchstone), let’s get one thing straight. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition does have a leaderboard. However, it just looks to be a weekly world ranking one.

This means you can only see it once the weekly event has ended and you can no longer set new times for it, eliminating the chance to spend seven days grinding to knock five milliseconds off of the time it takes you to grab a super mushroom so you can shoot up the leaderboards and know exactly how close you are to being able to beat your mate or grandmother’s PB while you’re doing so. So, aside from the ghosts you can race against in certain modes, you’re kinda stuck just racing to beat yourself.

Naturally, this hasn’t gone down well among some reviewers, as well as a lot of the folks on Reddit and Twitter who were looking forward to the game. “I’ve played for a while, but no leaderboards and friends records is a shame in this type of game. Probably won’t stick with this title for long. Nintendo Online Features are [stuck] in [the] 19th century.” one wrote.

Some have just resigned themselves to taking photos of their screen to text to friends they’re challenging, a bit like the modern version of doing so with an old-fashioned camera and mailing it to Nintendo Power magazine back in the day.

Are you planning on grabbing Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition to give it a go? Let us know below.