Incidentally a potentially great reason to have Wii U native N64 emulation. Though preferably with some options to deliberately run at a lower resolution with filters, because some of those games are NOT going to be pretty at 720p or 1080p.
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Welcome to Wii U's BC for Wii: It's a console within a console! :(
- Thread starter MarkusRJR
- Start date
Choppasmith
Member
I'm really hoping this is the case. I'd love the ability to retain USB Loading and Ocarina/Riivolution. AFAIK, You can still run those homebrew DS cards on 3ds in DS mode and before Wii Homebrew really took off, you could load up GC Homebrew with the same Memory Card exploit in GC Mode.
Yeah, while looking up some homebrew stuff recently, I came across a topic on some forum somewhere where a whole bunch of people were butthurt calling Clipper "such an asshole" for his oh-so-devious homebrew installer. Hilarious.
But anyway, I don't mind too much, I'm sure we'll get HD enhanced versions with Gamepad support down the line anyway. And as I said above, if there's a way for the HBC to be retained with full functionality, I'll be just fine and dandy. I never really got the whole "Ewwwww Wii games are so UGLY on an HDTV!" Games look fine to me.
It depends on the game (and the TV). Most games look fine. But some stuff (for example RE4 and Xenoblade in some places) looks really ugly on an HDTV.
shouamabane
Member
I gave up playing RE4 and Xenoblade because of how bad they looked on my TV.
KojiKnight
Member
If it's console within a console, I believe Marcum has already stated previously that he has some unused Wii hacks stored back just for when Nintendo decided to patch the latest holes (which they haven't done in years). There is a good chance some/all of them will work on the Wii within a wii. Would be awesome to be able to get rid of my Wii on day 1.
Part of the problem too is how the TV handles stretching the image. I think 4:3 games look FANTASTIC on my TV, but stretching that out to 16:9 can be kind of messy. It got worse later on too, eventually it seems Nintendo just straight up abandoned proper 4:3 support, so games like Other M, Xenoblade, and Zelda: Skyward Sword were letter boxed. At that point it was better just to play in 16:9, at least it'd fill my TV.
Though I did play most games with 16:9 support that way anyway. It takes something like cropping the top/bottom rather than expanding the sides or compromising between the two to make me feel 4:3's out and out better.
WaterChroma
Neo Member
But the Wii is backwards compatible with the Gamecube.
As far as the topic concerned; It maybe something that Nintendo has not put into the Wii U e-shop yet. I am slightly disappointed that there is no up-scaling for Wii games but as some have mentioned, true up-scaling and all the extra bell's and whistles require going through each game and figuring out what works. Plus their maybe legal issues that prevent that with third party games
WaterChroma
Neo Member
Is it an actual 16:9 tv or is it some odd number? It could also be a crappy tv in general and maybe a good excuse to look into getting a new one.
KojiKnight
Member
All hacked Wiis are compatible with Gamecube, see Devolution (GCN emulator in Wii mode, basically just a compatibility layer which WILL allow for Wii controllers to be used as GCN ones)
If Wii mode can be hacked and get the homebrew channel, GCN compatibility will follow.
RuneFactoryFanboy
Member
Wait, does is mean that the entire virtual console catalog is going to be locked away in the Wii mode submenu? As in when you go to the Wii U shop it won't have any virtual console games available at all?
That seems like such a waste. Why spend the last 6 or so years building this huge shopping catalog of classic games, only to hide it away in a seperate storefront behind a special legacy mode? I would think Nintendo stands to make a lot more money if there was a big Virtual Console section on the Wii U shop.
That seems like such a waste. Why spend the last 6 or so years building this huge shopping catalog of classic games, only to hide it away in a seperate storefront behind a special legacy mode? I would think Nintendo stands to make a lot more money if there was a big Virtual Console section on the Wii U shop.
Wow, just wow.
H_Prestige
Banned
KojiKnight
Member
Elfforkusu
Member
Most of it is the TV. Counterintuitively, I was playing on a low end 720p LCD for a while, and Wii games didn't look all that good compared to a CRT, but they weren't particularly offensive either.
It broke and I upgraded to a 1080p samsung. The upscaler is apparently crap, because 480p (and 480i, holy crap is that bad!) content from the Wii looks horrendous on it. It's basically unplayable, in the sense that it's genuinely difficult to keep playing when it looks so bad. (part of it is that I've seen it not look horrible, so the crappiness is all the more poignant)
Bravia circa 2005 so it's properly 16:9, and stuff on the 360/PS3 looks fantastic on it. I think it's mostly down to the fact it's stretching pixels out and the scaler may not be great at that and is probably an inevitable quality hit anyway. I think a lost of 480i 4:3 stuff looks great on it, so either I'm more fortunate than others when it comes to their HDTVs, I have relatively low standards outside of that 16:9 stretching on Wii, or I came off a really bad TV so even an HDTV upscaling 480i will almost always look way better.
It also looks like most modern HDTVs lack an S-Video input altogether unlike this, so I'd definitely want it around for all generations playing.
EDIT: And when I said it got worse later on I meant with Wii games, not the TV. Like said, more and more games abandoned proper 4:3 support and just letterboxed the 16:9 image. And come to think of it, it always seems like HUD/Text looks worse letterboxed versus properly widescreen, so it's actually a visual quality hit on those games versus just playing in widescreen.
PS3 scaled and cleaned up PS2 games on the original models.
360 did the same for certain games.
Yeah, but with the Dolphin emulator I thought Nintendo would go that route. Wii games look so much better with the resolution bump. I guess it's a performance issue, no other assumption makes sense. It's f***** 2012!
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
Sure. Has nothing to do with re-rendering at a higher resolution. Which is what this guy appears to want.
You need a machine far more powerful than the Wii U to do what the Dolphin does (brute force up-rendering), and the Dolphin only does what it does due to a vast array of game-specific programming. It also only re-renders polygonal assets, leaving many assets, be they certain textures or HUD elements, at their original low resolution, creating a terrible and slap-dash mixture of low and high res elements that serves to titillate in an emulator environment, but doesn't even come close to being acceptable on an actual production Nintendo console. Even if the power was there, it is not something you can just apply across the board.
So it has nothing to do with being f***** 2012.
The Dolphin is a fan effort that isn't ensured to work properly for all games, versus the Wii U's BC mode that's a professional effort that seeks to ensure 100% or at least 99% compatibility rate, the safest way to attain that is to run games as-is. Combine that with the aforementioned HUD stuff and other assets and yeah, it's easy to see why they didn't do anything. Best you can hope for is HD re-releases, the N64 VC games were sort of like that already given they ran at 480p instead of 240p. Hell, Sony doesn't even do THAT with their digital PS1/PS2 releases.
The Elite
BOSS
That's new to me as well. I think this is thread worthy. I don't mind that this is required for Wii games but I hope they find a way to support the VC/Wii Ware stuff on the Wii U interface at some point. I'm really surprised that's not the case out of the box.
Yup. Seems like a huge oversight.
Agent Unknown
Member
It's not ideal but at least it's real BC and we get to play all our old games right away and at no extra cost unlike the Vita.
The Elite
BOSS
I think they would have been better off handling it like the Vita. When I launch a PSP or PS1 game on the Vita it's technically running in a PSP software shell (that's why people have been able to exploit it) but you're not loaded into the PSP OS to do it. You're just launching software as if it was running on a PSP.
The Elite
BOSS
I do want to pickup Mario Kart so I hope so.
Yes, but not as much as you would hope
480p res, with 480p graphics on the disc, will be upscaled awkwardly by your TV than done internally by the console itself
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Yep. Here's kind of a big point people should keep in mind:
Sony - start with hardware BC supporting nearly all PS2 games, then remove it to re-sell customers HD collections and a handful of emulated PS2 games via PSN.
Sony Vita - get rid of UMD drive, no UMD trade-up or discount program, customers rebuy all PSP games via PSN, but at least the quality of the BC is superb, they did get that right.
Microsoft - make sure Halo 2 works at launch even with major graphical glitches, add a few dozen Xbox 1 games, abandon working on emulation leaving many games glitched or partially functional.
Nintendo - provide free importing of all Wii digital content, make sure everything works 100%, entire library playable outside of a couple of games that used a dance pad accessory.
... and Nintendo is the "stupid" company. No, not really.
Again, wait and see exactly what Wii U does in Wii mode. See if the system is internally upscaling the image BEFORE it goes to the TV, to output either a 720p or 1080p image, essentially, over HDMI. Quality could very well be superior to most / any TV scaler.
Remember, upscaling is NOT upresing or re-rendering. Nintendo said from day one Wii U would only render Wii games at the original 480p resolution internally. Hardware BC PS3s, for example, do not re-render PS2 games at 1080p, they just provide an optional blur filter to slap on top and upscale the low res image instead of letting the TV do it.
PSP games on Vita look good because Vita's screen is an even multiple of PSP's resolution, so when the PSP image is upscaled (not re-rendered) it isn't ripped apart by odd multiplier scaling artifacts.
IrishNinja
Member
the only disappointment i have here is if you can't use the premium discount/10% back to get VC games, that's what i was hoping for. i also wish people could see what you were playing in wii mode, and it'd be cool to have the new pro controller work for VC games but i guess we won't be seeing that, might stop a few purchases for me.
wait, what filter?
wait, what filter?
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
That's what the Wii U is doing, basically. Except that you can't only do it from when you insert a disc, since you don't "insert" downloaded Wii software. So you load the Wii Menu, basically turn the Wii U INTO a Wii, and proceed from there as usual.
The Wii BC here is basically as genuinely BC as something could be. The only benefit you get from doing it is "I don't have to keep the Wii around any more." No perks beyond that, just the ability to keep playing your Wii games. Arguably it's "perfect" BC, from that standpoint.
Shop combination, activity log, these are all after-the-fact value adds. Ones I'd love, honestly. But there's an argument to be made for the most accurate BC possible, which is what this is. Maybe you love the Wii shop channel, as an artifact from a bygone era! It's Wii software just like any other, aint it? It isn't perfect BC if you don't get that shop!
(Yes I know this is pushing it.)
DXB-KNIGHT
Member
They can keep the Wii games & Wiiware on Wii mode but I'd like to access the VC faster :/
Macho Madness
Member
Now the real question is this: Will I need to reboot the Wii U every time I go into Wii mode?
Ninja Scooter
Member
That right there is fuckin bullshit. Playing old VC games on the pad without needing the TV would have been a great selling point. Guess we shouldn't have expected much more from Nintendo.
Well, the emulators are made for Wii, and so they'll run in Wii mode. The hope is that they get each of the games on the Wii U eShop sooner than later so we can have native Wii U support with all that entails.
Come to think of it, maybe they could also enable a note function? That could be really, really useful for a lot of older RPGs and puzzle games.
Ninja Scooter
Member
And start the whole slow drip faucet over again? Wonderful. We will get to re-buy PunchOut in a year and a half when Nintendo decides to make it their monthly Wii VC release and adds in Wii U support.
TheUnknownForce
Member
Ultimately this is the biggest reason.
You guys hacked the Wii to hell and back. They sure as hell won't be letting any Wii exploit break into the Wii U. Same reason 3DS features are turned off with DS games.
It literally shuts off everything Wii U-related and acts like a Wii, same way the GCN bc worked with Wii.
Damn straight. At this point Nintendo probably know the Wii mode on Wii U will probably end up hacked again due to thru vast amount of exploits, but no way do they want any of them anywhere near the Wii U system mode.
If we're lucky we'll get that, but upscaling =/= upping the resolution. Just means the system handles scaling the processed image into one to display on a higher resolution TV without being too much of a mess, like the 3DS does with DS games and all HDTVs do when a non-native resolution video signal is sent.
Wait for the HD re-release then.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I suppose you're right. Nintendo has just never had an OS menu and digital download collection before Wii. There's something consistent about it just emulating the whole menu
Oh hell no! Hope for a patch/homebrew.
shouamabane
Member
The Wii shop channel was awful years ago when I had a Wii.
Can I choose a game and use my credit card to buy it without re-entering information each time now?
Can I choose a game and use my credit card to buy it without re-entering information each time now?
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