Nintendo is bringing back its famous gaming tournament. The Nintendo World Championships 2017 are taking place in New York at the Manhattan Center’s Grand Ballroom on October 7, and you can qualify for the event at Best Buy stores around the country (and play some upcoming Nintendo games).
At the participating stores, you’ll have to prove your skills in Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS. It’ll have two age brackets: 12 and younger and 13 and older. The younger group will play as Mario on the Luigi’s Mansion course, while the older group will take control of Bowser on the Bowser Castle 1 map. You can find the list of participating stores here.
The Nintendo World Championships first debuted in 1990. It put players through a gauntlet of challenges based on popular Nintendo Entertainment System games like Super Mario Bros. and Tetris. It was inspired by a fictional tournament that was a key plot point in the 1989 Fred Savage film The Wizard. The event gained notoriety for the reward, a golden NES cartridge, that has become one of the rarest and hottest collectibles in gaming.
Nintendo revived the event in 2015, but that was during the now gone Wii U era. The 2017 Nintendo World Championships can help showcase its new, successful Switch system.
Even if you don’t want to try to qualify, it’ll be worth going to the Best Buy events to play some upcoming games. Each store will host demos for Super Mario Odyssey for the Switch and Metroid: Samus Returns for the 3DS.