Nintendo World Championships: History and Background

The Nintendo World Championships (NWC) are a nationwide video game competition series, organized by Nintendo of America at no particular interval.

The first Nintendo World Championships were held in 1990, touring 29 American cities, being hosted in Los Angeles, CA twice. The NWC was conceived by Steve Grossman and Jay Coleman, principals at EMCI, Nintendo's marketing agency. Greggory Vasquez-Vasquez was the inaugural champion defeating 48 others and dominating the NES championship event. The event won numerous marketing awards and was sponsored by Pepsi, Reebok, and Nabisco. It was based on a custom Nintendo Entertainment System Game Pak, which would historically become one of the most rare and valuable NES cartridges. The NWC is considered one of the first ever esports events. In 2014, Nintendo released NES Remix 2, featuring the reminiscent Nintendo World Championships Remix, which uses emulation and online leaderboards for amateur global competition. On June 15, 2015, the second Nintendo World Championships took place for the event's 25th anniversary as part of Nintendo's E3 2015 coverage. The third Nintendo World Championships were held on October 7, 2017.

A video game themed around the event, titled Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, was released for the Nintendo Switch on July 18, 2024.

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