Image of the Day – Super Mario Galaxy HD

Oh my lord I want a WiiHD so bad.. D:

I know Nintendo’s done it for handheld consoles in the past, but I’m pretty sure splitting the SKU for Wiis won’t make quite as much sense when they could instead come out with a whole new console that’s backwards compatible with Wii games (and runs them at higher resolutions!).

The difference is subtle, sure. I’m just saying a Wii 2 makes more sense to me than a GameBoy Color-style WiiHD. Less confusing branding, and a bigger boost in technology.

Also, I hereby vote that the next-gen system be called a Wiii.

you mean Wiiii for Wii II

Yes. Yes, I do.

I have to agree with Tyrus…
I don’t have any sort of desire or need for Wii HD. People talk about HD as if it is the be all and end all of visual upgrades. For me personally it’s more about how all my games are widescreen. That was and still is something that I was happy to see become a standard this generation.

I know HD is crisper, I’m not blind, I can see the difference. It’s just not enough of a difference for me to care. I don’t feel as though my games look blurry or anything. The difference is that of crisp to crisper. It’s not enough to warrant me re-purchasing a Wii for Hi-Def.

I’d much sooner just get the next Nintendo system which then have HD and hopefully a whole new exciting and fresh system with a lot more power.

I’d take full-screen anti-aliasing at 480p like the Gamecube was able to do on Super Mario Sunshine (which I still think is more beautiful than Super Mario Galaxy, new lighting effects notwithstanding.) But I would bet that if an emulator can scale everything up without making the textures look horrible, it’s probably also capable of doing FSAA.

I’m not digging it. I always think games look really weird at higher resolutions than they were created for.

Gotta admit that half the reason I dont give my wii any attention is because it looks like ass enough on my TV to break immersion. I dunno if I’d bother to upgrade to HD though, perhaps in a few years time when i eventually tire of my 360.

@ALH: Really? I own a Wii and a PS3 and right now I own 4 PS3 games and 60 Wii games. I’ll be buying another 10 Wii games between now and March 2010 and will buy 4 PS3 games in the same time frame.

Sure, PS3 games look great, but trying to play a FPS on PS3 after doing so in the Wii is just a big pain and not as fun.

Now the 360, I’ll definitely never buy one. Don’t like buying tons of digital content and then having a RROD and not being able to transfer that into a new unit (which is what happens here in Mexico).

@EDEN: Whoa, what? What Wii games are you buying? I can only name about 10 good Wii games so I can’t even imagine what your library consists of.

And FPSes on PC are better than both the Wii and PS3.

Can no one else see that its just brighter?

just like they made king of the hill “HD” all they did was make the cartoon brighter

look for yourself

@TANOOKI84: The brightness is most likely just a flaw with the emulation. It’s pretty obvious the models are cleaner due to the resolution boost.

In addition to being 1080P, it also looks like he/she put on a lot of AA.

Either way, it does look very nice.
I just wish more devs put as much work into their games…

I don’t really mind if Nintendo doesn’t release a Wii HD. Good computers can already run Wii games at 720p and 1080p. Setting up the Wiimote to work fully with a PC is a bit of a chore, which is the only thing stopping me from shelving my Wii.

But the software will continue to get easier to use and PC technology will continue to get faster. Whether Nintendo releases WiiHD or not, you can happily play Wii HD in the near future.

And to N. Rumas: I know what you mean, but things will get better. PlayStation upscaling and texture filtering became many times better on PC than PS2. Yes, it still doesn’t look great, but at some point you have to accept that not every game will be fully re-developed into HD with more polygons and higher-res original textures. I’d bet money a Wii HD couldn’t upscale any better than the Dolphin Wii emulator.

But of course, there’s always texture packs that even things out a bit. Check out some of the Zelda and Mario texture packs out there for N64 emulators…yum…

Galaxy is just a plain beautiful game, period.

@EDEN I dont enjoy FPS on wii, if playing umbrella chronicles counts as FPS. Having to stand up/point the wiimote at all times breaks immersion for me personally, then theres the fact that I find the wiimote awkward to hold and the buttons hard to press for ‘action’, its not the most ergonomic of devices.

I guess that could be extended to playing ANYTHING on the wii. The controller turns me off, Its fantastic in wiisports, but for everything else its highly inaccurate and I dont have the time/money/space to give it my attention. Its just not my thing.

If I was actually hired on a wii team I’d change my tune pretty quickly, but as a gamer..360 all the way :p

@JHGD Here’s a list of all Wii games in my collection so far:

http://www.vgchartz.com/profiles/mygames.php?id=561&type=Own&edit=&console=Wii

As you can see I actually missed some games and my collection is at 72 Wii Games right now. Add to that New Super Mario Bros, Spyborgs, Little King’s Story, A Boy and his Blob, Muramasa, CODMW: Reflex, Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, Rabbids Go Home, DJ Hero, Dawn of Discovery, Baroque, Dead Space Extraction, Overlord: Dark Legens, OneChanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers, Excite Bots and Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars which will get bought between now and August 2010 (plus any other games not out yet) and you can see there are many Wii games worth checking out. Heck, Nintendo’s 1st party games worth owning are over 20 right.

I wish Wii output higher res too. I recently imported Sin & Punishment 2, and while the game rocks my socks… I feel like I need to get new glasses. Not digging the blurry low res.

As said above it looks like they’re missing some of the realtime lighting, but otherwise, wow that looks great. I’ve seen some emulated screenshots of Twilight Princess and SSB: Brawl which also hold up amazingly well at those resolutions. I’m surprised Nintendo made all of their textures and particle/fur effects that high detail given the resolution of the console.

Maybe they built that stuff expecting to eventually see it in higher res (like how all first party Gamecube titles supported 480p even though next to nobody had that and the component cable was a frustrating-to-come-by aftermarket part).