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The Nintendo Campus Challenge was a competiton where Nintendo toured universities throughout the United States and Europe to find who could get the highest score in a timed matchup. The game used for the Super NES competition included F-Zero, Pilotwings, and Super Mario World.
The cart has an unusual shape, with the PCB board parallel to the SNES. It has four rom chips, presumably one for each game plus the additional one to link them all together. It also has the DSP-1 chip, which is used in Pilotwings. There is a set of eight switches, which were likely used to change the settings in the game, although they seemed to have no effect when changed. A phone jack is present, likely to relay the scores to a Nintendo server to determine the grand prize winner.
The game itself works much like the Nintendo World Championships cart. You have a limited time to try and score as many points as you can. Once you complete the task in one game, you move on to the next one.
The progression through the game is as follows:
1. After you turn the power on, the titlescreen appears right away, no other screens with info on trademarks and such. A soft version of the Super Mario Bros – Aquatic Interlude plays in the background until you press START.
2. Super Mario World – Get 50 Coins A screen appears briefly to tell you the goal in Super Mario World and then you start off at Yoshi’s House. You get 99 lives, but they are infinite. If you die, you’ll still have 99 lives left. The easiest way to collect the 50 coins would probably be to complete the first level to your right, from Yoshi’s House (Yoshi’s Island 2) using Yoshi. There are 50+ Coins on that level since eating the apples with Yoshi counts. I also tried to avoid all the coins to see if I could proceed onto the next levels or if they were locked out of the Campus cart. But they weren’t. Wild guess is that the progress is not saved at all even though the regular SMW save message appears after completing the Yellow Switch Palace. Now either you can run around until the time is up (6 minutes total gameplay, but similar to the NES-NWC, if you complete the SMW – mission quickly, you’ll have more time to spend on round three) or you get the coins and proceed to the next goal.
3. After getting 50 coins, the score screen appears and sums up how much score you got up to this point.
4. Play F-Zero – Finish 2 Laps The first screen from actual F-Zero is the one where you get to choose your car. Choose between the four found in the original game. Nothing special about the F-Zero round really. There are three computer-played opponents, but you can come in fourth as long as you finish the two laps.
5. After finishing two laps in F-Zero, the score screen appears again and shows you how much you’ve scored so far in both SMW and F-Zero.
6. Play Pilotwings – Don’t forget to use your parachute I haven’t actually played this game on the SNES before, but I guess it’s pretty much the same. On the first level you have to land on a football field. Second level you’re a penguin who has to hit the pool-area. I can’t really make out what the landing place is on the third level as there’s never enough time to get close to the ground. When the time is up Pilotwings is abrutly terminated.
7. The score screen appears for the last time. Soft music in the background, can’t really tell if it’s a theme from some other SNES-game or if it’s especially made for the Campus Challenge. The score screen stays there until you turn the power off or reset the SNES.
There were 35 US universities that participated in the event. Known universities that participated include Central Michigan University, Arizona State University, and Texas A&M University. For the prize for winning at a university, you received a Super NES with Super Mario World, Pilotwings, and F-Zero. Consolation prizes were give to the next three places, at $100, $75, and $50. There were separate prizes for women and men, with the winners of the genders competing for the grand prize. The overall winner got $10,000. In addition, all the winners were put into a draw to win prizes of $5000. According to the USENET reference, the US competition lasted 7 minutes.
There was a European competition as well. It was likely very similar to the US competition, though it is unknown what the prizes were or if the contest was strictly at universities. Additionally, there was a competition in 1992 in Japan, which likely used the same format, though details on this are more sketchy. It may have been called the Champion Competition.
So far, there are three copies known to exist. According to the seller this was the cartridge used in the competition in Tokyo, Japan and at E3 the following year.
Auction Here – $15,000 starting bid, $25,000 BIN. Reproductions are also avilable from RetroZone.
Credit to SNESCentral for some of the info here.
