Wii Virtual Console (Improved graphics?)

[mkillio]

After reading IGN's look back at Majora's Mask on 64 I started realizing how much I want to go back and play other older games. I don't have any new games because I'm concentrating on paying off my credit cards. However if the Wii VC is going to improve the graphics at all i.e. High resolution (640x480) or better filtering, frame rate etc. Then I would rather wait. Also how difficult would it be to bump games up to 640x480 or stable high frame rates, not just from 64 but SNES and NES as well. Is this a job that could be undertaken by one programmer per game?

Please reply quickly, I'm itching to go digging for my 64.

 

[pc999]

If I am not wrong, there is no plan to improve anything.

 

[Bohdy]

Higher resolutions are trivial, but higher framerates may not be possible, as the original framerate was controlled by the game code, which must be ran at the correct rate.

 

[poopypoo]

Please reply quickly, I'm itching to go digging for my 64.

Lol, if you still have your 64, and controllers that work, i recommend you dig it out and hook it up! Not only will Wii not be out for another few months, we don't really have any guarantee that the older games YOU want to play will be available at launch. PLus, nothing's going to beat playing a game like Zelda with its original, intended control scheme. From what I can tell, nothing they could do to that Wii-mote will make it feel much like a giant N64 controller. I definitely enjoyed that giant analog stick, though it wasn't as convenient or sturdy as PS2's. It always stunned me -- N's controller felt so well-made and I was always waiting for my (often, often, often dropped) PS2 DS controller to break -- but almost always, the opposite usually occurred... can't beat Nintendo's games though. Still having a blast with Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour.

 

[StefanS]

After reading IGN's look back at Majora's Mask on 64 I started realizing how much I want to go back and play other older games. I don't have any new games because I'm concentrating on paying off my credit cards. However if the Wii VC is going to improve the graphics at all i.e. High resolution (640x480) or better filtering, frame rate etc. Then I would rather wait. Also how difficult would it be to bump games up to 640x480 or stable high frame rates, not just from 64 but SNES and NES as well. Is this a job that could be undertaken by one programmer per game?

I remember at least two interviews with Nintendo executives in which they that no improvement will be made to the games. So definitely no.
They might bump they resolution though, as they did with the Zelda emulation on GCN. But as somebody already mentioned you can't improve the framerate with emulation.

 

[Teasy]

I remember at least two interviews with Nintendo executives in which they that no improvement will be made to the games. So definitely no.
They might bump they resolution though, as they did with the Zelda emulation on GCN. But as somebody already mentioned you can't improve the framerate with emulation.

I remember interviews with Iwata where he said the opposite though, he talked about playing old games with a new look. I wonder what happened to that?

 

[StefanS]

I remember interviews with Iwata where he said the opposite though, he talked about playing old games with a new look. I wonder what happened to that?

I must have missed this

"We are doing several experiments, including working with the original Super Mario Bros., with the new technology," said Iwata. "The game itself and the gameplay shall be identical, but the look will be different; it's possible that with Revolution, we may be able to see the old games with new looks."

The company isn't new to visual remakes. In 1993, Nintendo released Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES, which introduced new graphics for the first three Super Mario Bros. games.

Swapping 2D artwork is easy enough, but Nintendo will also be providing downloadable versions of their 3D-centric Nintendo 64 games. In that case, Nintendo doesn't have any solid plans, but says it's possible for 3D games to "look sharper" when played on Revolution.

It seems like N64 get more resolution and maybe some AA.

and there might be some remakes. But from the sound of it not everything released on the VC will be updated, possibly only a few.

 

[inefficient]

If I wanted to play Mario64 or Zelda64 at high resolutions and tons of AF & AA I would just use my PC. There are already perfect emulators for these games.

 

[fearsomepirate]

It probably depends on the game, too. Back in those olden-tymie days of 3D, a lot of games had stuff directly tied to framerate. I remember that Descent's homing missiles did frame-by-frame readjustment, so that if you were playing the game on a fast machine, they were a lot harder to dodge. Some games may be candidates for a framerate upgrade.

 

[jandar]

If I wanted to play Mario64 or Zelda64 at high resolutions and tons of AF & AA I would just use my PC. There are already perfect emulators for these games.

If you wanted to play them legally and with little hassle, you would get the VC....

 

[inefficient]

If you wanted to play them legally and with little hassle, you would get the VC....

I just don't really care for the idea of being sold the same game twice.

 

[StefanS]

I just don't really care for the idea of being sold the same game twice.

So what was the point of posting? Just being knee-jerk?

 

[Tagrineth]

After reading IGN's look back at Majora's Mask on 64 I started realizing how much I want to go back and play other older games. I don't have any new games because I'm concentrating on paying off my credit cards. However if the Wii VC is going to improve the graphics at all i.e. High resolution (640x480) or better filtering, frame rate etc. Then I would rather wait. Also how difficult would it be to bump games up to 640x480 or stable high frame rates, not just from 64 but SNES and NES as well. Is this a job that could be undertaken by one programmer per game?

Please reply quickly, I'm itching to go digging for my 64.

It's possible that they could run the virtual N64 at a higher resolution with AA on, and it would work perfectly.

A higher frame rate would be unlikely as, depending on how they're emulating (LLE vs. HLE) it could break some games.

I'm interested to see if they can get Star Wars: Rogue Squadron or Battle for Naboo running on the VC, as currently these two games are completely impossible to run on any PC HLE-based emulator.


2D based games would see no benefit whatsoever from running on a higher resolution. The source art would not magically change to a higher definition without reworking/resampling them on the design side.

It would be entirely possible for Nintendo to do Mario All-Stars type reworking for various games, but it would be infeasible for every 2D game on the VC to get such a treatment. Remember, reworking the art can be pricey.

Personally, I'd rather have my VC show 2D games in their original resolution only! Nostalgia FTW!

 

[darkblu]

speaking of the VC and backwards compatibility, has anybody considered what are the chances of ninty re-printing some of their GC titles (not suitable for over-the-net distribution anyway)? would they need to have the agreement of the developer or can they re-print at will?

i'm wondering as there're several GC titles i never managed to get my hands on and i'd really like to..

 

[Urian]

480p and FSAA.

 

[ERP]

Given that Nintendo isn't going to just dump a bunch of ROM's on their site and let people run what works. They are going to have to pay for test on everyone. If they supported it in their emulator, a single artist could likely redo all of the artwork at a higher resolution on an 8 or 16 bit game in less time than it takes to test it so it wouldn't be a massive addtional cost if they chose to do so.

Depending on how they did it, they could probably allow you to switch back and forth between the highres and classic art without much work.

Supporting it without access to the original code might be tricky though, you would need someway to correlate new graphics top old. But you could probably achieve it by doing a simple Hash on characters as they are uploaded into the character memory, and correlating these hash values to their highres replacements. It's then just a question of rendering the original or the replacement.

N64 stuff is harder and probably all you can hope for is higher resolution.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How do UI's scale with resolution upgrades? Are UI components mostly textured quads that'll scale, or are they directly drawn bitmaps that will end up too small unless reworked?

 

[ERP]

How do UI's scale with resolution upgrades? Are UI components mostly textured quads that'll scale, or are they directly drawn bitmaps that will end up too small unless reworked?

For 2D games it's just characters like anything else.

For 3D there are a couple of ways it's done, either a textured Quads in which case it will trivially scale all be it without visual improvement, or something written by the CPU directly to the frame buffer.

The latter was not uncommon in the N64 era (all my N64 games do it), and it presents a problem for increasing the resolution of games. The issue is that there is nothing special about the backbuffer to let you modify adress calculation and writes to scale up the UI. It would probably be sufficient however to have someone identify the addresses used and store it as additional information, so you could treat read/writes there differently.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Upscaling to 640x480 with something like the 2xSal mode seen in the JNES emulator would be nice. That may be what they mean by "visual enhancement." It would also be nice if they figured out a way to get rid of sprite flickering in NES games.

 

[ERP]

Upscaling to 640x480 with something like the 2xSal mode seen in the JNES emulator would be nice. That may be what they mean by "visual enhancement." It would also be nice if they figured out a way to get rid of sprite flickering in NES games.

The latter is probably not practical because it's often a decision by the software to flicker in order to show more stuff on screen. It could be fixed if they have access to the source code and rebuild it for an "upgraded NES".