NES Campus Challenge 1991 Run

Channel:

Nerdly Pleasures (Great Hierophant)

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982

Published on August 1, 2020 7:37:36 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8_8mdML8aE

Game:

Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988)

Duration: 7:09

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Here I am demonstrating the second NES competition cartridge released, NES Campus Challenge from 1991 on my Nt Mini. Like its predecessor NES World Championships 1990, this cartridge consists of three NES games which play in the following order : Super Mario Bros. 3, Pin-Bot and Dr. Mario. The idea is to obtain a high score during the time allotted, which was about 6:15. The official tournament required you to get to Dr. Mario, otherwise the highest score determined the winner of the competition.

NES Campus Challenge from 1991 is somewhat differently designed than NES World Championships 1990. In NES World Championships 1990, you started out in Super Mario Bros. and had to collect 50 coins to progress. That requires you to get to World 1-2 or to die several times in World 1-1. Here in Super Mario Bros. 3 you only have to collect 25 coins, which is simple to do without beating World 1-1.

The next part is Pin-Bot, where you must earn 100,000 points to progress, it ends a few seconds after the counter gets to or past 100,000. Pin-Bot is very generous with point giving, anyone will be able to accomplish that with ease. In NES World Championships 1990, Rad Racer was the second game and ate a lot of time because you had to finish the first course to progress. Neither middle game is designed to make you play on it for a moment longer than you have to because the points given are relatively predictable.

Finally we have Dr. Mario. Dr. Mario was inspired by Tetris, which was the final game on NES World Championships 1990. In NES World Championships 1990, one way to gain high scores is to make as many four-line Tetrises as possible. This was possible because the tetrads continually descended without interruption. Dr. Mario has a more traditionally structured design around levels where you have to eliminate all the viruses in the level before proceeding to the next level where there are more viruses to eliminate and more points to earn. Here, the speed at which you can progress through levels is important. Also, you should look out for opportunities to kill two viruses at once, that gives you more points than just killing one. In my case this is where things got a bit pear shaped, it has been a while since I last played Dr. Mario for any length of time.

NES Campus Challenge 1991 was not given any release as a prize for competition winners and Nintendo Power readers like NES World Championships 1990. One competition cartridge surfaced and RetroUSB made a reproduction of it, which is how others outside the original cartridge's owner have been able to play the game since 1991.

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