The Untold Story of Nintendo World Championships 2015 

I was one of the eight qualifiers. I have a vivid memory of Kit and Krysta giving us big smiles and thumbs up in a stairwell before we went out on stage. I was so nervous but your enthusiasm reminded me to have fun! Always wanted to thank you for that!! Great video as always.

I was also a finalist in 2015, along with Jordan. I had participated in the 1990 event when i was 13, and this competition allowed me to be a kid again for a day. Kit talks about how a hypothetical nwc championship would be a life highlight, i can tell you from experience that winning a speedrun in the original Legend of Zelda in front of an enthusiastic crowd is a top moment in my life. A few of the finalists from the 1990 NWC put their tournament DNA into the Classic Tetris World Championship, which just completed its 15th annual tournament back in June. I was brought into the CTWC staff after my appearance at NWC 15, and my goal every year is to make sure the game players feel the same energy and love that i felt on the stage of the Nokia/Microsoft theater in 2015.

Another 2015 NWC qualifier here...and I remember it so well, almost like it was yesterday. I've been to a lot of retro gaming conventions since then and made a ton of wonderful friends. It's just so awesome to have been a part of it.

I didn’t make it to the event but I streamed the entire thing at home, it was one of my favorite live events I’ve watched. I loved the competition, the celebration of the games, and I made such good memories watching with friends. I really wish Nintendo would continue the tournament, there’s so much potential for the type of games that can be used too!

Ending the 2015 event with new Mario Maker levels is the kind of thing that feels like a reference to the movie "The Wizard", which was the movie that was made to promote the north american release of Super Mario 3, which likewise had not been seen or played prior to the movies release, as that movie ended with a final showdown in the "brand new" Super Mario 3.

I'm glad to hear more of these stories about the NWC. It's an event I've always wanted to try out for and I'm hoping this new Switch game of that is a signal for it in the next year or so. Problem with me not trying out was like you said ONLY 8 SITES to try out at. Closest one to me was a 6 hour drive to Minneapolis, and I already had summer vacation plans in place, which is why I couldn't try out then and even in 2017, too. I proposed this idea after the 2017 event was announced that one or two Best Buy's in the top 50 markets hold tryouts, and they could still send the Top 8 of all those to the NWC, but alas, no. It also really sucks that the 2015 event occurred with the Wii U doing so bad, and getting the message out there was hard, but it was the BEST GAMING EVENT OF MY LIFE that I saw with the variety of games and surprises. Those single game tourneys in the subsequent years like Mario Kart 8, Smash & Splatoon at E3 were meh to me cuz they don't have the element of surprise and variety that the NWC has. I still believe the NWC can come back. Nintendo just needs to go with my tryout proposal, put out great marketing and with so many new releases since 2017, there's almost no reason not to bring it back. Even if I dont qualify, I still want to try out, but make the sites close to more people's homes, especially as I'm having a blast with the NWC Switch game itself.

I have to hop on your Patreon now that I can afford it! I remember you two playing my Mario Maker 1 level in a Nintendo Minute episode. It was a SMB3 airship auto scrolling airship level with a trust fall. I wish I had downloade the video because your reactions were great. Greetings from Switzerland!

Such a bummer that it sounds like Nintendo wouldn't entertain the idea of skits again. I loved them.

Kits new look is absolutely FIRE. The buzz cut looks great.

I am glad to know Reggie practiced with a different controller. And I think it would have been hilarious if it was Sakurai behind the scenes

Kit's Luigi now

I thoroughly enjoy every video you guys make, you're both very good storytellers.

I kinda wonder how much the NOA staff were involved or heard about the nordic (swedish) nintendo championships a couple years earlier, attended once and ended up attending all the ones after, its such a great format to compete (unnanounced new games even cooler) with all kinds of players and just celebrate gaming. Crazy enough the same player have won i think 3 of them, and it were very fierce competition with qualifier all over the country mostly.

Good Lord! Look at Kit's face!

Turnout for the 1990 NWC varied a bit in each city, but some locations had easily over 10,000+ people. There were 100 game stations with the NWC competition game, and they rotated in a new group of 100 competitors about every 10 minutes.

Kit looks so handsome with his haircut. It really suits him!

I’m not sure it’s fair for Iwata to blame you all for the lackluster E3 presence in 2015. The games weren’t there and they generally weren’t good. There’s only so much you can do with, what is honestly, bad Nintendo content.

Reggie going for the pro controller! Thats the spirit at the time! Nintendo with the Wii U, live and forget

Kit shave the stashe, you look like a cop

You guys should interview Terry Torok, he's the guy that produced/hosted all of these Nintendo World Championships. Also the co-host of Video Power (show). Cool stashe, Kit

Kit the hair looks good!!

PLEASE tell the story of NWC 2017, because honestly I barely even remember it

Did you guys ever look into Chris Houlihan?

From afar (Europe) it was a pretty great show. All the things around E3 2015 were cool and worked to produce excitement and hype fans up. Sadly all this worked to make the actual reveals all the more disappointing. After 2014 I was hoping to see Nintendo finally gear up with the WiiU and 3DS but 2015 only gave us weak spin-offs and an implicit admission that the home console would be left to die, which produced such whiplash compared to the high efforts put into the presentation of the event that me and everybody I knew following it were left numb with disappointment. When you two sometime talk about managing expectations, well that was a good exemple of when it would have been necessary.

It's a rather bittersweet moment I think. For one, Nintendo wasn't doing great with the whole Wii U generation and yet it seemed to have better marketing than nowadays. I'm sure I am biased due how Nintendo did more events focused on the consumers and core users, where now it's just promoting products as they are and nothing more. And with everything I'm hearing, getting marketing wrong and things not going as well was just a drop in the glass compared with Mr. Iwata's health declining. If there was something to look forward was his leadership and clearly he wasn't getting any better. If the company didn't have the talent that it has, that would've been it for the company, and yet everything paid off with the release of the Switch. A lot of people agree that while the Wii U did terrible, it was a wake up call for Nintendo to step up and try harder; marketing got more bold, the company began taking more risks with how they handled their IPs, etc. Shame that we are not getting anymore of these events or that sense of cohesion Nintendo had during the Wii U era. Again, despite the shortcomings of that generation, nothing seems to imitate it nowadays.

I was ok with, or maybe even unaware of, how bad Nintendo E3 2015 was thanks to NWC, EarthBound Beginnings, and Mario Maker being 3 months away. Of course, none of that could carry Wii U through the dark age of 2016…

If it costs money then it's not worth pursuing - business 99

I get a vibe that this is western developed. All of the games are based on their NES versions and not the famicom, or fds versions. Having the Western sounds in kid icarus, metroid, Zelda 2, and Zelda is really off-putting.