Your "local" Nintendo World Championships Qualifiers

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Nintendo used the word "local", and we give it the scare-quotes it deserves.

As KoopaTV previously reported, Nintendo of America has revived the "Nintendo World Championships" from 25 years ago at participating Best Buys. The qualifiers are May 30. We now know where those are and what games are involved.

According to e3.nintendo.com:

"When & where:
May 30, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time, at the following eight Best Buy locations:

• San Francisco, CA (1717 Harrison St.)
• Torrance, CA (3675 Pacific Coast Highway)
• Miami, FL (10760 NW 17th St.)
• Schaumburg, IL (900 E. Golf Road)
• Maple Grove, MN (12905 Elm Creek Blvd. N)
• Long Island City, NY (5011 Northern Blvd.)
• Dallas, TX (9378 N Central Expy)
• Tacoma, WA (2214 S. 48th St.)" 

Don't forget to fill out this .pdf registration form which is titled "PowerPoint Presentation". This and the official rules reveal that the game you'll be playing will be... Ultimate NES Remix... on the 3DS. Well, guess that makes up for the Wii U console-favouritism shown by Nintendo's Best Buy events up 'till now, but no one was complaining.

So what are the games as part of Ultimate NES Remix? Well, Championship Mode, which includes Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, and Dr. Mario.

So instead of showing favouritism to display-friendly Wii U games, Nintendo just shifted their favouritism to be to EXCLUSIVELY Mario games. This is on top of Mario Maker at Best Buy a few weeks later. You know, what no one will wanna show up for. But that's not the worst part.

Apparently, Nintendo has a strange definition of local. Here's what a Georgia resident reported seeing on Facebook... shared by the official Super Smash Bros. page, no less. Even though there is no Super Smash Bros. in sight for the contest:

"Head to a local participating Best Buy location."

These Facebook posts are geo-targeted, meaning you'll get this Miami one if you're in the South (except if you're closer to Texas) and, say, the New York one if you're in New Hampshire.

Just to get an idea of how "local" Miami is:

Oh, just a 10 hour drive. No biggie.

If you want to just "head to a local Best Buy", then you gotta start driving the night before if you want to arrive first-come first-serve at 10 AM local time. So have fun driving at the middle of the night on some highways. ...It might even be for nothing.

You know, people deride the "Nintendo World Championships" in the same way they deride the "World Series" for baseball: It appears to be America-only. But, as you can see, Cubans actually are a lot closer to the Miami location than many red-white-and-blue-blooded Southerners are. If not for a clause in the rules stating that only legal residents of the 50 States + Washington D.C. (but definitely not Puerto Rico) may participate, you could've seen the Castros join in the fun. Hell, the dudes at Guantanamo Bay are closer. Are they legal residents of the United States? (No.)

...Hell, what exactly is your "local Best Buy" for the dude in Hawaii?

It's times like these that we gotta be reminded of some wise words that Nintendo ought to take to heart.

"the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant."

Nintendo is promoting the Nintendo World Championships as "some of Nintendo's biggest fans will get to go head-to-head in a gaming showdown for the ages."

Yeah, some. Only 6,000 (first 750 folks, 8 places) of them... and only the ones in Nintendo's favourite places. Unfortunately, people who didn't get the chance to be born into the fortunate circumstances of living in these big cities (actually, it sucks to actually live in most of these places) or being rich enough to just move to one of them in their post-childhood life will never be recognised as a "biggest fan". I guess the circumstances of your birth are pretty relevant, since you're just ignored otherwise. It's hard out there.

To Nintendo, only the folks in the biggest, richest cities, mostly on the coasts, are the biggest fans. Who gives a damn about the rest of you in Middle America?

I would like to mention that I called this, too. I wrote last Thursday,

"Anticipate Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, one or two in Texas, and a southern Florida city wrongly representing the entire Southeastern United States."

More or less true. That said, Miami actually wasn't an available Best Buy last year. How curious.

Y'all need someone who will fight for you, the average American who also likes Nintendo. And it looks like Confederate Reggie won't. Unfortunately, this is just another example of the long history of the videogame industry only caring about the biggest coastal cities.

Ludwig is aware that not every city listed is on a coast, but most are. KoopaTV is acutely aware of the struggles of Middle America. Ludwig will not be participating in the Nintendo World Championships. He's also pretty bad at the games listed, anyway.


Read the Nintendo World Championships live reaction log at E3 2015!
Enforcing amiibo purchase limits also hurts Middle America.
The circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant, but Shigeru Miyamoto tries to make up things about Bowser Jr.'s life anyway.
Nintendo has another chance with eight more cities for another event, and three end up in California.
Two years later, the Nintendo World Championships are coming back. The qualifiers are in the same places as 2015.