How to play Nintendo World Championships 1990 on Mac

Game summary

In the year 1990, Nintendo held a now rather famous video game competition called Nintendo World Championships as part of the Powerfest traveling video game festival. Contestants would compete against each other in a triathlon of the NES titles Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer, and Tetris. The ROMs themselves were modified to suit the competition, and the winners would be determined by an overall score count from all three games. High placing winners took home a cash prize amongst other goodies. However, the finalists of this competition each took home their own copy of the specially made ROM on a standard NES cartridge. Another issue of the cartridge, colored in a golden tint similar to The Legend of Zelda cartridge, was even more elusive and was only distributed as a prize giveaway in Nintendo Power Magazine. Today, these two cartridge variations are some of the most elusive and sought after video games in history and are often considered a holy grail of video game collecting. As of recent years, only 116 gray cartridges and 26 golden cartridges are known to have ever been printed. Nintendo would later follow-up the legacy of this event with Nintendo World Championships returning in 2015 and 2017 showcasing old and new Nintendo games alike. Nintendo has never since made anything alike these specialized prints, further cementing their legacy.
First released: Dec 1990

Play Nintendo World Championships 1990 on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Nintendo World Championships 1990 on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.

Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.

Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).

Nintendo World Championships 1990 installation steps for Mac

Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac’s security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that’s left to do is install Nintendo World Championships 1990 like you would on any PC.
Did it work?
Help us improve our guide by letting us know if it worked for you.
👎👍