Nintendo World Championships

The Nintendo World Championships was a 1990 Nintendo-promoted video game competition that toured thirty cities across the United States. It was based on scoring points in three Nintendo Entertainment System games (Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer, and Tetris) within a time limit of 6 minutes and 21 seconds. The competition was based loosely on the movie The Wizard.

City Competition Structure

Nintendo World Championships had three separate age groups (11 and under, 12-17, and 18 and over) The city contests were held over the weekend and began on Friday afternoon and ended on Sunday night. Over three days, players qualified for the Semi-Finals over two rounds. The first round a player had to score at least 175,000 points in the "Pods" area. To qualify for the Semi-Finals held on Sunday night, contestants had to play on a seven player stage and score at least 200,000 points.

On Sunday night, the Semi-Finalists were divided their age group, and each Semi-Finalists group played in the "Pods". At most, 100 could play at a time, The top seven scorers from each age group then played in a final round on stage while Terry Lee Torok and John Michael Phane moderated play by play to the crowd. Out of the seven scores, the top two scorers played head-to-head for City Champion.

Each finalist won a trophy, 250 dollars, and a trip for two to the World Finals at Universal Studios Hollywood. The runner-up won a Nintendo Powerpad and a Gameboy.

World Championships Competition Structure

The World finals were held similarly to the City Contests and were held at Universal Studios Hollywood in the Star Trek Theater, now Shrek 4D. Each age group's thirty finalists played one round for the top seven positions. The 18 and over group played first, followed by the 11 and under, and completed with the 12-17 age group. Each age groups top seven played and the two top scores played head-to-head for the Title.

Games

File:1990 Nintendo World Championships Gray.jpg

Official Nintendo World Championships 1990 gray NES cartridge

Contestants played a specialized game cartridge designed specifically for the contest. Officially, a player has 6 minutes and 21 seconds to play, which is divided up into three minigames. The first minigame of the competition is to collect 50 coins in Super Mario Brothers. The next minigame is a version of Rad Racer where players must complete a specialized Nintendo World Championship course. The final minigame is Tetris and this lasts until time expires. Once time does expire, a player's score is totaled using the following formula:

(Super Mario Bros.) + (Rad Racer x 10) + (Tetris x 25) = Final Score

Some players focused their tactic on getting a high score in Tetris while others tried to exploit a trick in Super Mario Brothers where a part of the game may be played repeatedly using warp pipes.

There were two methods to obtaining fifty coins in Super Mario Bros. The first method involved going down the first pipe, collecting 20 coins, finishing the board, and getting the remainder of the coins in World 1-2. The second method had the player dying twice on World 1-1.

Strangely, the second method proved much faster and Thor Aackerlund used it during the tour to get the World Record score of over 4,000,000 points.

The highest score with the first method during the city tour was 2,800,000 by Jeff Falco.

The first two games were modified so that a player could not get a "game over." In Super Mario Bros., the player was given 99 lives, and in Rad Racer, the in-game timer was permanently fixed at 99 seconds. In Tetris, however, stacking a line of blocks over the top of the playing field would effectively end the game prematurely, as the player could not start again—the game would freeze at the "game over" screen until the 6:21 competition time ran out.

Results

Three World Champion titles were given. Jeff Hansen won in the 11 and under category, Thor Aackerlund won in the 12-17 category, and Robert Whiteman won in the 18 and older category. Below is a full listing of the ninety finalists from each city for each age category.

City	11 And Under	12 Through 17	18 And Over
Dallas	Peter Carter	Jeff Baker	Ray White
Cleveland	Adam Misosky	Mike Winzinek	Darko Tankosic
Philadelphia	Paul Lee	Josh Caraciolo	Vince Kailis
Pittsburgh	Mike Trogdon	Phil Evans	Bruce Trogdon
Detroit	Shaun Joyce	John Wyman	Chris Dillard
Indianapolis	Shannon Gresh	Steven Gingerich	Chris Holt
Boston	David Moreton	Jason Orlando	Steve Factor
New York City	Michael Alex	Rob Bianco	Robert Whiteman
Hartford	Jeremy Wall	Eric Trinagel	Mike Ferranti
Chicago	Jacob Winch	Mark Cabanayan	Kevin Papke
Houston	Long Khuu	Thor Aackerlund	Marcelo Gonzalez
St. Paul	Andrew Luers	Curt Thorn	Pat Kensicki
Oklahoma City	Heather Martin	Kevin Gilley	Pete Florez
Phoenix	Justin Grant	Jeff Bender	Richard Watson
Seattle	Nicholas Membrez-Weiler	Justin Ellstrom	Eden Stamm
Portland	Dallas Lang	Mike Stricklett	Chris McCormack
Norfolk	John Yandle	Kenny Welch	Bob Bender
New Jersey	Jared Cohen	David Lopez	Mike Iarossi
Cincinnati	Reid Somori	Jeff Brearly	Tim Ross
Milwaukee	Jason Brandos	Tim Drews	Donna Thomas
Kansas City	Randy Napier	Jason Haag	Alan Von Ah
Oakland	Christopher Vu	Robin Mihara	Michael Pirring
Los Angeles (week 1)	Michael Scott	Chris Tang	Grant Nakata
Los Angeles (week 2)	Al Paung Kanan	Alan Hong	Colleen Cardas
Salt Lake City	Heeth Kell	Jeff Falco	David Jachmann
Denver	Dustin Durham	Shannon Webster	Cassandra Ross
New Orleans	Johnny Crosby	Paul Williams	John Yates
Atlanta	Jeremy Tomashek	Nick Wietlisback	Joe Somori
Miami	Bradley Brunet	Daniel Raymond	Erik Aackerlund
Tampa	Jeff Hansen	Rich Ambler	Rob Minasian

There was no official competition round to crown a single winner. However, after the competition ended there was an informal face-off between the three winners, with Thor Aackerlund taking first place, Jeff Hansen taking second, and Robert Whiteman finishing third.

Jeff Hansen went on as America's representative to Japan to win the World Championship title again in Tokyo, Japan, and again in Las Vegas at a rematch with the Japanese champion, Yuichi Suyama.

Prizes

The top winner in each age category took home a $10,000 US Savings Bond, a new 1990 Geo Metro Convertible, a 40" rear-projection TV, and a gold painted Mario trophy. Runners up in each age category received a silver Mario trophy.

The remainder of the Top Seven of each age category received a thousand dollar savings bond.

Semi-Finalists in each city received $50 in Nintendo Cash as well as a "NWC" semi-finalist white baseball cap with 2 collector Super Mario pins.

"Well. Nintendo rules." Poster.

Cartridge

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Nintendo World Championships 1990 gold NES cartridge

For the competition, 116 special game cartridges were manufactured. 90 of these copies exist as the official gray cartridge and were given out to City Finalists after the 1990 NWC concluded. Each gray cartridge has a unique number making the cartridge easier to track and extremely difficult to counterfeit. The circuit boards in the gray and gold cartridges are identical. Since the gold cartridges have no unique identification numbers, it is extremely difficult to track their origin. The other 26 are gold—like the The Legend of Zelda cartridge—and were given out as prizes in a separate contest held by Nintendo Power magazine.

Both versions of the cartridge feature DIP switches on the front, which may be used to alter the time limit. To play the cartridge, one must have a controller connected to both controller ports and press start on the second player's controller. For the competition, there was a special switch that would start all cartridges simultaneously.

Collectable Value

The Nintendo World Championships 1990 game cartridge is considered to be the rarest and most valuable NES cartridge released, promo cartridges aside. The NWC Gold cartridge is often compared to "holy grail" items from other collectible hobbies, such as the T206 Honus Wagner baseball card, or the Action Comics #1 comic book, and the gold variation has in fact been nicknamed "the holy grail of gaming" or "the holy grail of video game collecting". The circuit boards for the gold and gray cartridges are identical. The gold cartridges have no numbers and are almost impossible to track their origin like their gray counterparts. The gold casing holding is the same from The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

On 9/16/2009, a gray cartridge was sold at a garage sale at 76th and Emerson Street in Minneapolis for $2,000 cash but gray cartridges often bought from champions $5,000-$6,000.

In 1998, Mike Iaroosi sold his gray cartridge to a collector for $1,600. It was later sold in 2007 by the collector for $10,000 in a private sale.

On March 18, 2007 a listing appeared on Myebid.com in which a gold cartridge appeared to have been inadvertently included in a bereavement sale of 24 NES games; according to the auction, a father was selling the possessions of his deceased son. The auction ended at $21,400, though collectors have speculated that neither the listing nor the bids were legitimate.

To date, of the 26 NWC gold cartridges produced, only 12 copies have ever surfaced. In 2008, a gold cartridge went for $15,000, and the next copy to surface sold in June 2009 for $17,500. Most recently, in December 2009, JJGames presented a copy on eBay as part of a charity auction for World Vision; the auction ended with a winning bid of $13,600. The high bidder failed to pay and the cartridge sold privately for $18,000.

In February 2010, video game collector/reviewer Pat the NES Punk discovered and acquired a gray cart in the San Diego area for an undisclosed amount.

Reproduction Cartridge

In 2008, the website retrousb.com began selling reproduction cartridges of Nintendo World Championship. The reproduced cartridge is nearly identical to the original, complete with its own DIP switches. The differences are that the cartridge is blue in color and has a different board in order to avoid confusion with authentic carts. It is region free, but will run slower on PAL systems, thus the time limit will be increased. The game also comes with a laser printed manual that has exclusive tips and cheats.

Additional Nintendo World Championships

Nintendo held one other Nintendo World Championship event: Nintendo PowerFest '94 (also called Nintendo World Championships II). In 1991 Nintendo held their Nintendo Campus Challenge event which was not billed as a World Championships but used a similar format and traveled to college campus throughout the US.

External links

• Nintendo World Championship at MobyGames
• AtariHQ has an in-depth look at Nintendo World Championship as well as playing tactics and screen shots.