We have a perplexing new rumor about Nintendo, that no one even knows how to make heads or tails of – yet.
Update: Pyoro has now revealed, quite humorously, that the game they were teasing was Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. You can read more about that game here. The original article follows below.
Pyoro, after acknowledging that they heard rumors of 3rd party companies getting a ‘hands-on’ with the Switch 2, has shared a new picture, which suggests that something is about to be announced. In fact, given Pyoro’s track record, it only takes days before we get that announcement, that Pyoro then explains is what they were teasing.
Although Pyoro likes to make teases and rumors of upcoming announcements and events, they don’t ever share the information directly. They like to use coded messages instead, and a lot of the time, the fans trying to guess can’t figure it out at all.
So what do we have this time? As Pyoro shared earlier today, they posted a picture of the Nintendo World Championships NES grey Cartridge for 1990. They added no words to that post, just the picture.
Just to briefly explain, the Nintendo World Championships were a competition Nintendo held in 1990, where kids got to compete by trying to get the fastest times on NES games. They gave away the carts used in the championships to those kids, many of whom still have them today. There were 26 gold carts made, some of which were given away, but this picture is of the more common grey cart.
Let’s get this out of the way first: there’s no hidden message in the text on the cart itself. Pyoro took a picture of a cartridge with no changes to it, so it’s the same text from 1990. As for what the text says? As is explained in this manual for a reproduction cart, courtesy of Gaming Alexandria, those are instructions for the small switches that you can see on the side of the cart. Those dip switches are used to add or reduce the time you can play the games in the cart.
The playable games were Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros, Tetris, then published by Elorg, and Rad Racer, a racing game surprisingly made by Square Enix, coded by their legendary programmer Naser Gebelli. Of these three games, Rad Racer has yet to see rerelease, from Nintendo or Square, on any platform.
Would it be disappointing to you if this was just about Rad Racer coming to Switch? Our bet is that this is about the fourth return of the actual championships itself. And just like in 2015 and 2017, Nintendo of America is likely to treat it like a more serious competition, with qualifying rounds prior to the finals to be held during June.
There’s no reason that it can’t be both, either. But given Pyoro’s track record, expect to just be completely befuddled once again when the big announcement comes around and it’s nothing anyone guessed right.
