Nintendo World Championship 2015 Recap
Last night, Nintendo brought back the Nintendo World Championships after 25 years of absence. The event was held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles and kicked off their activities for E3 2015 with great success. Nintendo’s executives were present as well, watching the show from backstage.
Back from left to right: Shinya Takahashi (Director & General Manager of Nintendo SPD), Katsuya Eguchi (Deputy General Manager of Nintendo EAD)
Front from left to right: Reggie Fils-Aimé (President & COO of Nintendo of America), Shigeru Miyamoto (Senior Managing Director & General Manager of Nintendo EAD), Takashi Tezuka (Executive Officer of Nintendo EAD, Producer of Super Mario Maker and Yoshi’s Woolly World)
Read a full recap of the event after the break.
Nintendo of America’s Treehouse team warmed up viewers and attendants with some brand new gameplay of a Yoshi’s Woolly World level that will be playable on the E3 showfloor this week. They ended their pre-show broadcast with a special announcement video from Shigesato Itoi, creator of the Mother (EarthBound) series, who shared a few words about his work and revealed that the first Mother game, originally released on the Famicom, would be released in English for the very first time in all regions just a few hours later under the name EarthBound Beginnings (it’s still just Mother in Japan, of course).
The show proper, hosted by Kevin Pereira and commentated by DJ Wheat (and temporarily his son, miniWHEAT), Justin Flynn, Andre Meadows (Black Comedy Nerd), and Smash commentator D’Ron “D1” Maingrette, began with an introduction of the 16 contestants. Half representing the online gaming community, invited by Nintendo directly and the other half successfully competed at select Best Buy stores across the United States for high scores in Ultimate NES Remix’s Championship Mode.
The first stage consisted of two sets of 4v4 best-of-three matches in Splatoon with the losers being sent to the “underground” where they could compete for a chance to come back at the end. The first “underground” challenge was to defeat Aquamentus (Level 1 Boss) and obtain the first Triforce piece in The Legend of Zelda (played on Wii U Virtual Console).
The second stage featured the announcement of a brand new game, Blast Ball, for Nintendo 3DS. The contestants were the first people outside of Nintendo to play the game. After a few 3v3 matches, the losing players were sent to the underground where they had to face off against Mother Brain and escape Planet Zebes in Super Metroid (also played on Wii U VC).
In stage three, the challenge got turned up to 11 with Mario Kart 8 in a custom race in 200cc on Baby Park, Animal Crossing and Big Blue (all from the recently released second add-on content pack). Those sent to the underground were faced with Balloon Trip, the classic “how far can you get” mode from Balloon Fight (also played on Wii U VC).
The final elimination round, stage four, was preceded by some payoff from last year’s Super Smash Bros. Invitational. During the winning ceremony of the event, second place winner HungryBox called out Reggie Fils-Aimé and challenge him to a match. Reggie promised to “kick [his] ass” next year and actually made good on this promise. HungryBox faced off against Reggie with his standard character, Jigglypuff while Reggie chose the freshly released Ryu – on Final Destination. Naturally Reggie lost. After this showmatch, the competition continued with the contestants playing a “for fun” match with all items enabled.
The grand finale, which pitted the two finalists Cosmo Wright and John “Numbers” Goldberg against each other, premiered brand new elements of Super Mario Maker in four devious levels designed by Nintendo of America’s Treehouse experts, Morgan Ritchie and Eric Smith. John Numbers emerged as the winner and received a gold Mario statue. Both finalists received a New Nintendo 3DS XL signed and handed over by Shigeru Miyamoto himself.
You can rewatch the whole show below:
Images taken from: Nintendo of America on Twitter