Why the Wii should have been HD

I had a nice gallery made up for this but as usual the Warehouse8 server is being a piece of shit and not working so this'll have to do for now. Please don't forget to click the image on the imageshack page to view it properly kthx.

Anyway, I really really can't believe how good Metroid Prime looked. Even in HD the textures are outstanding. Considerably better than a lot of damn 360 titles. What's amusing is that there are details in some of the textures that are damn near invisible in SD. The game runs a bit slowly on my computer at times, dropping to 30 fps and the game uses a fixed timestep which means at 30fps the gameplay is 2x slower. But still, it's pretty decent in most areas. If you wan't to max it out consistently you probably can't, but I'm using a 3.2ghz CPU at the moment. Apparently Dolphin is a bit better in 64bit so if you're on a 64bit system you might have more luck. I wish I could put up some HD videos because it's so damn purty. Retro Studios <3 (however,





( Edited 28.05.2010 12:19 by knighty )

This. This and this.

Every image is gorgeous. Everbody know if Mario Galaxy was HD it would be one of the best looking games out there. I want a HD Zelda in a cel shaded style also.

Nintendo screwed up in this area. You don't have to be a graphics whore to know games look better in HD.

I started in my profession in a time where everything was the bomb as long as it was bilineair filtered. We've come a long way since then.

I remember nintendo licensing s3 texture compression for the gamecube, and I think the in-house knowledge paid off.

Even though the wii is, shame them, not capable of hd graphics, the storage and compression solutions are. I remember a surface being able to layer 8 dynamic textures on them on gamecube. This is surprising because it usually is very hard for a system to do so. A better dynamic compression solution could overcome this, and drastically improve - less resources required for better results.

I think what you did here is awesome. It is proof that there is way more technical capability in a wii console than render graphics up to specified resolutions. Maybe the next wii system with hd graphics will show us that the high budget games of today are real lookers like anything else.

Wow that looks really awesome

Seriously what a shame. Retro had great artistic talent to go with their sound technical knowledge.

Yes, Metroid would DEFINITELY be one of the best series to show off HD Graphics+Sound. Hopefully they're coming out with some new cheaper tech that will let 'em mass produce the hardware while still staying in their little boundaries they've made for themselves.

NO
F'ing
WAY
BOWS DOWN to Knighty!!!!11111!!!!

Hey, all I did is take the screenshots. Bow down to the guys who made Dolphin Thanks anyway XD Another batch soon, just working my way through Dragon Roost Island in WW and the Pirate Labs in Metroid Prime.

How good is WW on it? My PC aint exactly amazing, but would be good to try it out!

It's pretty good. WW is capped at 30fps so it's quite a bit less demanding than MP. Most areas are 30 fps, drops down to 20 sometimes. Definitely playable. There's no sound though which really sucks. Apparently GC sound emulation is proving a touch nut to crack, works pretty well in MP though.

I can't believe how much better Wind Waker looked over TP. I loved the cel-shading from the beginning.

knighty said:
It's pretty good. WW is capped at 30fps so it's quite a bit less demanding than MP. Most areas are 30 fps, drops down to 20 sometimes. Definitely playable. There's no sound though which really sucks. Apparently GC sound emulation is proving a touch nut to crack, works pretty well in MP though.

Try getting Rogue Leader @ 60fps it's awesome. But hmmm I think you should've used Wii games to match your title. Good stuff nonetheless but well, guess we all know why they didn't go HD and in the end it was better that way.

What's your PC specs?

Those Wind Waker shots are awesome, I can claerly see the detail in everything, and it was a beautiful game to begin with. I can't really see any difference in the Metroid Prime shots though, might just be my eyes.

I can\'t really see any difference in the Metroid Prime shots though, might just be my eyes.

wut

Anyway, my specs are:

CPU: Intel C2D E6750 OC\'d at 3.2ghz
GPU: 8800GT 512mb
RAM: 2GB

It\'s mainly your CPUthat matters for emulation.

Good stuff nonetheless but well, guess we all know why they didn\'t go HD and in the end it was better that way.

How was it better that way? If you play PC/360/PS3 games a lot, going back to Wii games is like having your eyes scraped with knives, it\'s horrid. The Wii should have been spec\'d like the 360 or something. You can\'t argue the cost of it, the 360 is fucking cheaper than the Wii now. I honestly don\'t know how even the hardest of Wii fanboys can defend the price anymore. I mean, if you want anymore proof that the Wii is a GC in a new box, just look at the fact that Dolphin (A GC emulator) did Wii games with barely any extra stuff.

( Edited 04.04.2009 14:49 by knighty )

I\'m guessing Fzero GX runs like a slide show then? Would be nice to see some of that shit in HD.

( Edited 04.04.2009 16:48 by Mario_0 )

F Zero GX doesn't work full stop. I don't see why you'd think it'd be slower than the other stuff though. MP is 60fps too.

Thats nice knighty, I remeber trying to play WW on my 32" LCD and the colour at the bottom left fucked up which was strange.

On a furthur note, I completly agree with knighty, there is no reason why the Wii shouldn't of been specced the same as the 360, and again, developers (such as high voltage) have just managed to pull out some engines that should of been possible at the start. If the game is not nintendo made, the difference in graphical quality is shockingly poor (bar a few) Lets hope for better next gen though I can see it only being as powerful as the xbox 360 next time around for some reason, it's like nintendo in a nutshell, graphics are the afterthought which I kind of appreciate, but when it stops good games such as SFIV and things like Timesplitters 4 (which is obviously going to be using cryengine now) coming to the Wii, then it pisses me off!

It's only this generation that graphics have been an afterthought. It's no coincidence that F zero GX, Metroid Prime, Twilight Princess etc were some of the best games last gen and had the best graphics. Nintendo were amazing at stunning looking games but they don't care anymore. I mean, look at how great N64 games looked next to PS1 games.

Except for Galaxy, the Wii has generally used the excuse of "gameplay over graphics".

Graphics are a bonus, not a necessity. Developers don't need to make a game look nice, they do it to show they care about us. I just don't know anymore...

There's a difference between "good graphics" and "graphics made with care" IMO.

The point is that the graphics have to suit the game and make it playable fully. Nice graphics are appriciated, it\'s not like they didn\'t have to make galaxy amazingly good looking is it?
It would just be nice for everyone to respect the Wii a little bit more even though the graphics are dubbed down alot.

And in saying that I mean when people say \"it will never come out, the graphics are too good\" and the fact is that most games could be put on the wii, albeit with severly dulled graphics/a completly differnt engine.

( Edited 04.04.2009 21:50 by Echoes221 )

\"it will never come out, the graphics are too good\" and the fact is that most games could be put on the wii, albeit with severly dulled graphics/a completly differnt engine.

Thats the thing though when people say that they refer to the fact that the effort and time to go into making a Wii version with dumbed down graphics withought making it look too shit compared to the original (maybe thinking up new content to make up for that) would take alot of resources, to much resources so that it isn\'t worth doing at all.

It\'s not that it can\'t be done, it just isn\'t worth doing most of the time.

( Edited 04.04.2009 21:57 by Mario_0 )

The thing is, there is a market, because of how much the Wii has sold, imagine all the different tastes and withing those sold, there are family all with differnt tastes and different ages. It\'s like missing out all over again with the GC, you see an awesome advert for a game and then you see the ending and it was only for PS2 and Xbox which was always saddening, but that was completly different, the little purple box was dying whilst the equally sized white box is booming more than any other console and deserves some more respect from developers to be honest.

In a way, I see the Wii as an experiment for nintendo (rather make or brake) because all the past consoles had brilliant graphics and this is the only one (other than the DS) that focuses on the playability of the console by everyone, we might either see the same low caliber graphics shit happen next gen [with some mad innovation], or nintendo use this as a stepping stone and truly blow everone away.

( Edited 04.04.2009 22:08 by Echoes221 )

I'm hoping they will. The Wii was definitely a make or break, after 2 gens in a row of losing it they were headed the way of Atari and SEGA until they released the Wii. It does need more respect from developers. Maybe it'll get it, maybe it won't, but because of the Wii's prodigious success, Nintendo isn't going anywhere for a LOOONG time.

On the subject of graphics, I swear Majora's Mask has better graphics than most Wii games. Of course I don't mean literally, but the care that went into it is atronomical and while replaying it I've been re-impressed at every turn. Mario Galaxy has that kind of care, Metroid Prime had that kind of care, infact loads of GC games did, Wind Waker, Pikmin, etc. Infact it's probably the same thing as saying that RE4 looks better than RE5, y'know?

It's attention to detail, no matter how petty that makes games great and that's what nintendo and other great game designers incorporate to make a brilliant game. You can always tell games that have had minimal effort because they lack detail and are so full of glitches you wander whether they have been beta tested or not. Whereas most 'good' games you can almost find no glitches (LoZ TP was full of them though) as they have been severely put through the paces and when you look at the landscape and think i can get there by this.this.this. and this then you usually can. 'unifinished' games lack that finesse I'm afraid and that is what sets apart the brilliant from the mediocre.