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Nintendo World Championships Return to E3 2015

• Michael Cottuli
• May 16th, 2015

Back in 1990, Nintendo had a competition set up to help promote its film “The Wizard,” where competitors tried to get as many points as possible in Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer, and Tetris within 6 minutes and 21 seconds. This triathlon of nineties Nintendo cheese happened only once, and as it happens, Nintendo saw fit to bring it back again this year. Nintendo made the announcement – along with the outline of their plans for E3 2015 and other events in June – in a YouTube video today, where they showed the fan-favorite Reggie Fils-Aimé in a classic training montage to compete for the event.

Nintendo hasn’t been a company of outstanding showmen these past few years, after having forsaken most big events like E3 in favor of their own Nintendo Directs. Seeing them take part in huge industry events like E3 is beyond refreshing, and I’m excited to see if their appearance here at E3 shows that they’ll be more willing to take part in the Western community in the future. As great as Nintendo games have been recently, their business practices (Such as their heinous “Creator’s Program” on YouTube) have shown a complete disregard for treating their Western customers well, and they haven’t made much of an attempt to try and better understand them.

On top of their decision to engage with E3 once again, it’s equally as important to note the tone in which they make this announcement. Nintendo is making no attempt to be exciting, or enticing to any focus group. They’re doing what they do best: being absolutely insane goofballs, and embracing all of their ridiculous nineties glory. In the video they released, Reggie was working out on the infamous Virtual Boy to a ridiculous song about being “a virtual lion”. Also, in the new Nintendo World Championships logo, they’ve decided to keep the triangular “Nineties rad” logo.

We’ll see if this return to form for Nintendo is the start of a new direction for the company. At the very least, we should all be excited to see the sort of nineties cheese that they’ll be bringing to the table in this revival of the Nintendo World Championships. If this video is anything to go by, Nintendo has something special planned for E3 this year.