How do Wii games look on the wii u? (disc not digitall)

Just curious as the wii u is backward compatible, I had a wii years ago but not at the moment and there are a lot of games I wouldn't mind getting again to play on the wii u, just wondering how they look? are they upscaled to 1080p? do they look stretched or washed out? or do they look just as good as they did on the wii?

thanks!

They look slightly crisper, not upscale by any means but it does look a little sharper.

@ttualumni13: nice, so they're actually improved then, and full screen 16:9 format or boxed?

They look pretty bad, better than the original Wii. If the original Wii game supports widescreen, then it will do widescreen.

The Wii U emulates the Wii and then just scales up the image.

If you want your Wii games to look pretty, go play them on a computer.

Yeah everything I played was widescreen, nothing boxed. Playing on the game pad looked really good too. Smaller screen hides flaws well!

Every game is upscaled to 1080p, if a game supported 16:9 on Wii it'll be 16:9 on wii u, if it doesn't like madworld it will be 4:3 boxed. Likewise, if a game didn't support progressive scan on wii, wii u will force it but it will blur text, such madworld.

Games that were natively 16:9 480p on wii look great on wii u, the upscale helps quite a bit.

@Prince_Denspion: they look like Wii games, played on a Wii U. The system doesn't upscale backward compatible titles like the Xbox 360 and PS3 do.

@ChiefFreeman: Sounds good, just didn't want to risk the games looking slightly worse since being emulated. If they look the same as if in a wii, that would be fine with me.

They look the same. It doesn't do anything. The Wii U essentially becomes a Wii. I was using 1080p HDTV's before the 2006 Wii existed. I had component video cables for the Gamecube era.

If you never had progressive scan enabled on Wii, then the Wii games will look nicer but that's due to the TV and not the Wii U as the Wii could have done the same had you bought better cables.

BTW: I am not sure why you made a distinction between disc and digital since the data and games would be the same.

What? The Wii U doesn't upscale the Wii games, not according to Nintendo themselves (below) or any of my tests. I've been using component video cables since the Gamecube generation.

The difference isn't going to be there for someone that has been HD since the GC generation...of course, if you were playing Gamecube and Wii with regular composite cables and then play those Wii games on a Wii U connected to an HDTV, you'll see a difference. I didn't though, because I was already HD since the Gamecube era. Even if you play on a shitty HDTV and move to a good HDTV, you can see differences....but the differences aren't because of the Wii U, it's the HDTV itself.

Here's three quotes from Nintendo (Reggie Fils-Aime, Mark Franklin, and other Nintendo Reps) themselves on the matter:

Will the Wii U render my old Wii games in HD?

No. In an interview with Giant Bomb, Mark Franklin, head of PR for Nintendo, revealed that the Wii U would not "up-res" or upscale Wii games to an HD resolution.

Furthermore, 1up has provided a quote from Reggie Fils-Aime in which he says, in response to this question, "It will not do that. That's really driven by the hardware, and the original Wii games were built for a specific type of hardware. There's no mechanism to quote-unquote 'up-res' that unless we launch a brand-new game." However, the link provided for the source of this quote is a video where upscaling is not specifically mentioned, so this quote from Reggie is unconfirmed at the moment.

Finally, Ben Kuchera from Wired reports that he was "flatly told" by Nintendo representatives that "the hardware will not be able to improve the resolution of Wii games."

It is important to note, that if you are using the old red, yellow and white composite cables on the Wii then yes, the games will look significantly better on the Wii U. This is because, the old RCA cables only offer 480i and not true 480p. If you bought red blue green component cables however then the games will look the same.

Nintendo Reconfirms Wii U Will Not Make Wii Games Sharper

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/01/nintendo_reconfirms_wii_u_will_not_make_wii_games_sharper

@SolidTy

I thought people knew what upscaling meant by now. Upscaling is NOT adding more pixels. Upscaling means taking a native image and fitting it to your screen. If the console didn't do it, your TV would.

However, the Wii U internal scaler is quite good, and because of that and hdmi producing better colors, wii games do look better *upscaled* on Wii U. Not a huge difference, but noticeable. Maybe not to you but I see it.

There is no device out there that will increase the native pixel count of an image, there's no such thing as *up-resing*. Upscale is not that.

They look the same. I have noticed some performance improvements, though. The Last Story ran like shit on my Wii. On the Wii U, framerate issues weren't so bad. Whether this is true for others, I don't know. It could have been that my Wii had problems.

Your TV plays a big role. I had a Westinghouse 720p(60hrz) television in college, and all my games and blu ray looked horrible on it. I use a vizio 1080p(120hrz) TV now and everything looks better.

I have a 40" Samsung 1080p 120hz tv, I would think the wii games would look decent enough, my only worry was losing quality playing wii games on the wii u. Now those worries are put to rest.

They definitly look better because of HDMI output. Skyward Sword is still a jaggy hell, but the text is readable now

Or component Video output on Wii.

---

EDIT an explanation from NINTENDO themselves who confirm Wii U does not make Wii games sharper or upscale Wii games:

Here's three quotes from Nintendo (Reggie Fils-Aime, Mark Franklin, and other Nintendo Reps) themselves on the matter:

Will the Wii U render my old Wii games in HD?

No. In an interview with Giant Bomb, Mark Franklin, head of PR for Nintendo, revealed that the Wii U would not "up-res" or upscale Wii games to an HD resolution.

Furthermore, 1up has provided a quote from Reggie Fils-Aime in which he says, in response to this question, "It will not do that. That's really driven by the hardware, and the original Wii games were built for a specific type of hardware. There's no mechanism to quote-unquote 'up-res' that unless we launch a brand-new game." However, the link provided for the source of this quote is a video where upscaling is not specifically mentioned, so this quote from Reggie is unconfirmed at the moment.

Finally, Ben Kuchera from Wired reports that he was "flatly told" by Nintendo representatives that "the hardware will not be able to improve the resolution of Wii games."

It is important to note, that if you are using the old red, yellow and white composite cables on the Wii then yes, the games will look significantly better on the Wii U. This is because, the old RCA cables only offer 480i and not true 480p. If you bought red blue green component cables however then the games will look the same.

Nintendo Reconfirms Wii U Will Not Make Wii Games Sharper

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/01/nintendo_reconfirms_wii_u_will_not_make_wii_games_sharper

It looks better for me coming from someone with no Wii component cables. Playing from my Wii to my HDTV is blurry and shows lots of jaggies (same with my gamecube setup). Playing from the Wii U though everything is a bit more clearer. I noticed a clear difference with Xenoblade. I'm sure there will be no difference if you had component cables.

I don't get why people are saying the Wii U emulates the Wii. The Wii U turns into Wii mode and uses the components the Wii would use but giving the option to use HDMI. It's the same way the Wii did for the Game Cube games, the Wii would just go into Game Cube mode and only use the components the Game Cube would use.

It's to do with the architect used in both systems and so it would switch between which ever mode is needed to play a Wii game with the Wii U or a Game Cube game with the Wii. The difference between the PS3 & Xbox 360, was that it didn't have any components from the previous consoles and so it had to do software emulation and with that, it could add improvements onto the visuals.

I've used both HDMI and Component to play Wii games on Wii U and HDMI definitely looks a little bit sharper. It's not a massive difference, but a difference nonetheless.

I have noticed that if I use component cables, my TV says the resolution is 576i, while if I use HDMI it says it's 1080p.

Yep. Spot on.

Your post was already answered three times directly from Nintendo. And yes, HDMI will say 1080p on your TV.

Here's three quotes from Nintendo (Reggie Fils-Aime, Mark Franklin, and other Nintendo Reps) themselves on the matter:

Will the Wii U render my old Wii games in HD?

No. In an interview with Giant Bomb, Mark Franklin, head of PR for Nintendo, revealed that the Wii U would not "up-res" or upscale Wii games to an HD resolution.

Furthermore, 1up has provided a quote from Reggie Fils-Aime in which he says, in response to this question, "It will not do that. That's really driven by the hardware, and the original Wii games were built for a specific type of hardware. There's no mechanism to quote-unquote 'up-res' that unless we launch a brand-new game." However, the link provided for the source of this quote is a video where upscaling is not specifically mentioned, so this quote from Reggie is unconfirmed at the moment.

Finally, Ben Kuchera from Wired reports that he was "flatly told" by Nintendo representatives that "the hardware will not be able to improve the resolution of Wii games."

It is important to note, that if you are using the old red, yellow and white composite cables on the Wii then yes, the games will look significantly better on the Wii U. This is because, the old RCA cables only offer 480i and not true 480p. If you bought red blue green component cables however then the games will look the same.

Nintendo Reconfirms Wii U Will Not Make Wii Games Sharper

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/01/nintendo_reconfirms_wii_u_will_not_make_wii_games_sharper

solidty pretty much quit gamespot last year. i think he lurks very very rarely. he might see your comment who knows.

@ttualumni13: yeah, amazing how much better Wii games look playing on Dolphin with the graphics pumped up to 1080, 1440 or 4K.