Nintendo World Championships

Competition structure

The Nintendo World Championships consisted of eight rounds, all separated into the three age groups. Contestants entered by going to one of 30 local competitions, which were held at the 1990 Nintendo PowerFest. On the first two days of the PowerFest, contestants would play in groups of up to 50 at a time, and the top seven scorers were brought onto a main stage to compete against each other. Contestants could re-enter the first round as many times as they wished.

Each second round winner was invited back to the last day of the PowerFest at that location. All the players in each age group played a third round, and again the top seven scorers were brought on-stage to compete in a fourth round. The top two scorers in the fourth round then competed head-to-head for the title of local competition winner in their age group. There were 90 finalists, 30 in each age group. Each finalist won a trophy, some other relatively small prizes, and a trip for two to Hollywood for the main Nintendo World Championships event.

The Championships were held at Universal Studios. Each age group's finalists competed simultaneously in the sixth round, and the top seven scorers were brought on stage for the seventh round. Finally, the top two scorers in the seventh round competed head-to-head for the title of Nintendo World Champion for their age group.

Cartridge

For the competition, 116 special game cartridges were manufactured. 90 of these copies exist in a grey cartridge and were given out to semi-finalists of the 1990 NWC. Of these cartridges, 26 are gold—like the Legend of Zelda cartridge—and were given out to winners and runners-up in a contest held by Nintendo Power magazine.

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.

Both versions of the cartridge feature DIP switches on the front, which may be used to alter the time limit. Reproductions of the game cartridge, complete with DIP switches, can be purchased from RetroZone; the reproductions are created so as to be clearly distinguishable from authentic NWC cartridges.

Collectible 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, Inverted Jenny postage stamp or 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".

On March 18th, 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 most recent copy to surface sold in June 2009 for $17,500.