So what's the reason for these low res hud elements in emulated Cube/Wii games, I know that the original materials are sub hd, but I would think someone would have upscaled the hud elements by now. Or is it some technical barrier with how hud is drawn? Ugly huds are pretty much only reason stopping me playing these old classics with Dolphin.
2D stuff doesn't scale as well as 3D. It's the reason for visual filters like the HQX ones exist. Scaling up 2D only makes the 2D look worse, in many cases, and Dolphin doesn't have external filter support like 16-bit emulators do.