The 2015 Nintendo World Championships Were a Beautiful Reminder of Why Gaming Is Amazing

This year's E3 may officially start today – today being the 15th of June, in case it's not actually today anymore – but gamers have already been treated to two brilliant shows, thanks to a couple of Sunday evening events held by Nintendo and Bethesda.

It's the latter's show that most are talking about this morning, mainly because it was the first "proper" conference of E3 2015. Bethesda's presentation was also its first ever on the big stage at E3, but you wouldn't know it: it nailed the format with hefty chunks of the new DOOM and Fallout 4 gameplay and very little filler (the Hearthstone-"inspired" The Elder Scrolls Legends aside).

For all the excitement Bethesda's conference brought though, for many of us last night will be remembered for the special occasion that was the Nintendo World Championships 2015.

Nintendo had already made an impact earlier in the day (that day being the 14th of June – do keep up) with an online Super Smash Bros. presentation that revealed, among other things, that Ryu from Street Fighter had been added to the game and was available now. But it's telling that by the time fans headed to bed it was the World Championships they likely dreamt about instead.

When it was first announced, leading to some under-attended qualifiers, NWC 2015 felt a bit like a throwaway attempt at replicating the reasonably popular Super Smash Bros. Invitational tournament Nintendo held at last year's E3. But what happened last night was four and a half hours of sheer grin-inducing bliss that ultimately reminded us why gaming, when it's done right, is still one of the most entertaining and wonderful hobbies on the planet.

The Nintendo World Championships tournament last took place 25 years ago (and, like last night's, proved its name wrong by only letting American gamers enter, but that's by the by). This year's competition saw 16 contestants participating in a number of knockout rounds until only two were left: those two would play a head-to-head contest to see who would be crowned champion.

The rounds catered to both long-time Nintendo fans and younger generations by offering a selection of games that spanned the company's 32-year home console history, from today's Wii U back to the NES. It was a beautiful thing for long-time gamers like me to see Nintendo's classic games get the respect they deserved by a company proud of its heritage.

Splatoon, Nintendo's recently released multiplayer paintballer, rubbed shoulders with the NES version of The Legend of Zelda. A round featuring the year-old Mario Kart 8 was followed by one featuring the 30-year-old Balloon Fight. Old and new were presented to the gaming community with equal enthusiasm, met with comparable excitement by the crowd in attendance and the hundreds of thousands streaming at home.

Many of today's gamers hadn't been born when some of these games were first released. Indeed, many of their parents were only kids at the time. So as I watched the stream I imagined families worldwide doing the same together, with parents and children sharing their enthusiasm as games from their own generations were featured.

I imagined a father watching on with curious interest as his daughters got excited during the Splatoon round, before losing his own shit when Super Metroid turned up, telling them: "This was the game your dad played." I imagined a mother humming the music from Balloon Fight – a tune that had been swimming around unrecalled in her head for decades – and her son realising his mum is a lot cooler than he thought.

Nintendo has always celebrated its history. The Wii's Virtual Console service ended up offering nearly 400 classic games from the 8- to 64bit eras. The Wii U and 3DS Virtual Consoles are quickly growing too, offering 175 and 150 vintage titles respectively from the NES, SNES, N64, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and DS.

Usually, though, these Virtual Console games are tucked away in each system's digital eShop. Short of the odd mention during a Nintendo Direct, they're never really celebrated like they were last night. It was a truly beautiful thing to see Nintendo essentially deliver the message that there's no such thing as old games or new games. There are just games, and they're all magical.

Got an entire afternoon to spare? Watch the Nintendo World Championships 2015 in full

Nowhere was this best highlighted than the tournament's final event. Much like in The Wizard – the cult 1980s movie where Fred Savage from The Wonder Years takes his brother across America to compete in a Nintendo championship – the final game was one the public had never had a chance to play before. In the film it was Super Mario Bros. 3, but last night it was the newly renamed Super Mario Maker.

If ever there was a perfect way to end the night, it was with this. No game better encapsulates the idea of new and old games coming together as one than Super Mario Maker, a Wii U title that takes classic Super Mario Bros. gameplay – or Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World or New Super Mario Bros. gameplay, for that matter – and adds modern features like a touchscreen level designer, HD graphics and online level sharing.

As the crowd whooped and whoa-ed through the four devilishly difficult Super Mario Maker stages created by Nintendo's own Treehouse team, I imagined those families again: this time united in cheering on the final two contestants. Granted, I may have made them up in my head, but with over 300,000 people simultaneously watching online I'd like to think some of them were parents, children, brothers and sisters all bonding over their love for Nintendo and games in general.

There's a lot of cynicism surrounding gaming these days, and despite all the excitement E3 brings you can expect to see plenty of moaning on social media and games websites over the next few days. You'll get it every time another remastered edition of a PS3 or 360 game is announced for Xbox One and PS4. You'll get it every time a hip-hop star, sports personality or YouTuber is trotted out onto a Microsoft, EA or Ubisoft stage to pretend they care about a game when the only reason they're there is to get the conference reported in mainstream publications that wouldn't usually care about video games, but do care about Drake.

But as this week continues, try to put that negativity to the back of your head. There will be some amazing games shown for the first time at E3, and as each one is revealed, remind yourself what the Nintendo World Championships 2015 told us in such a beautiful way last night: video games are amazing. They have been for decades, and they will continue to be for many more to come.

@Scully1888