Topic: How do Wii games look on hd television? esp. xenoblade

It refers to the lack of smoothing of edges. In pixel art, it can be a bad thing but in 3D art it is preferred to be on by some.

In my experience TVs will auto-adjust their resolution depending on the source - assuming they're capable (one problem some people had with VC content on the Wii over component links was that some HDTVs will only accept 480p over component so the 480/576i that classic console games were being displayed in a lot of the time wouldn't display at all). So you'd set the Wii U TV settings to output 720p if that's what you want. I think Wii games are output in some kind of "container" so my TV doesn't switch to 480p or 480i or whatever when I play a Wii game. Honestly I can't see that it would make a huge difference, but play with the Wii U output and see if you like Wii mode better in 720 or 1080.

All it really comes down to is that a lower resolution image is being made to fit on a higher resolution. Setting a 1080p tv to 720 won't make a difference, because a 720p image is still being stretched to 1080. Unless you are saying that your TV will leave out pixels with black space and make a 720p image instead, which would be pretty much identical to 720p

To try and make this easy to understand, upscaling works by filling in the blanks. It looks at groups of pixels and guesses what should display. Even though you're getting a 480p signal with a typical wii game, every pixel on your 720p or 1080P Tv has to display a pixel. Depending on the quality of the upscaler, you can get a really nice picture.

Again though, the wii u upscaler is nothing special. On modern tv's it is the best solution to play Wii games and they will look acceptable, However increasing the resolution, and thus the amount of upscaling that has to happen, in my opinion can only result in a worse looking image. as the amount of pixels to guess for increases substantially.

Some games look pretty well, as long it's not too blocky... or pixilated.

The only Wii game that I've played on my Wii U is Skyward Sword, but it looks absolutely terrible.

It's really annoying because I've only played it for about 5 minutes but I just can't get passed how grainy it looks.

You could try using the gamepad. It's a little small, but you should be able to place it pretty close and I believe it has the correct resolution native.

I've played a lot of my Wii games on my Wii U.

I don't think they look that bad. Yeah, they're not the prettiest and most amazing, but these games were made with the SD Wii in mind, not the HD Wii U. I can look past that and play the game. The jagged edges don't ruin my experience of the game.

Heck, I'm playing Metroid Prime 2: Echoes on my Wii with Composite Cables hooked up to my HD TV and I still think the game looks fine. I still think Ocarina of Time looks alright on the N64 (which I played recently and didn't notice the poor framerate everyone's been talking about lately).

I compared New Super Mario Wii to New Super Mario Wii U on the Wii U console and there is a huge difference. The Wii version is not HD and doesn't look nearly as nice.

Basically, Aluwolf said it all, the picture quality will depend on the upscaler that is being applied. If your TV or potentially also your AVR produce better upscaling results, there is no point in leaving the job up to the WiiU, because in that case, the picture quality will be worse than on the Wii, where the image would be put out at 480p then being upscaled by the TV (or AVR, or even an additonal upscaling unit that is part of your chain) to 720p/1080p.
As Aluwolf alluded to as well, the WiiU is no ... let's say PS3 in terms of upscaling. Most TVs and even more so, most AVRs are very likely to produce superior results. It would follow that, if you're playing non-hd games on your WiiU it's probably best to set it to a non-hd resolution, meaning upscaling will take place further up the chain in more capable hands. You should definitely try it this way once to at least check how good your other components perform, again most likely they will perform better or at least as good.
Last but not least, you might have an option to do 1:1 pixelmapping without any image upscaling/streching being applied, depending on the TV and/or AVR you use, and the settings available. Beware though, the image will look tiny and if you are using screens with certain display technologies (like e.g. Plasma) there are further drawbacks and considertions to such an approach.
In short, leave the job to the TV or AVR (depending on which result you prefer), if no other option is available (or if you have some really poor AV equip :-/ ) leave it to the WiiU. If the PQ resulting from the Wii looks better than that resulting from the WiiU, you now know why

EDIT: I just remembered reading some time ago, that the WiiU might just pass on the 480p signal for Wii games anyways, in that case, there should be no difference since scaling would fall to the rest of the chain anyways. Any variation would be due to HDMI VS Component and totally dependent on your TV/AVR chain. I'd be surprised if there would be any noticeable difference in 99% of the cases. Probably if people see differences it just a mix of wishful thinking and not harmonizing their settings for hdmi/ component inputs.

in a nutshell....

Going from 480p to 720p you get just over 2x the number of pixels in the image, from 480p to 1080p you get 5x the number of pixels. Which means that the edges of objects have that many more pixels to play with which produces smoother edges.

The image is showing Anti-Aliasing but it's the same effect. When you take a photo with a digital camera each pixel on the camera receives the "average colour" over that area of the sensor. With a computer generated image there's no sensor so the easiest way to display an image is to have each pixel represent a point. Which is where the jagged edges come from. AA reduces jaggies by taking more samples across a pixel, increasing the resolution by its very nature also increases the "number of samples" overall.

i.e. A game running at 4K with no AA will have just as much "jaggies" as a game running at 1080p with 4x AA and a game running at 720p will have about as many jaggies as a game running at 480p with 2x AA.

Xenoblade is one of the best looking Wii titles on an HD TV. Yes, there are jaggies but no way as bad as Skyward Sword

They look fine to me, but I usually give more importance to gameplay than to visuals. I guess it has to do with me playing lots of old games on emulators, games from the late 80s and early 90s that as you'd imagine look awful on modern displays, but I enjoy them all the same. I've been playing Twilight Princess these days on my Wii U, and now Skyward Sword, and I don't have a problem with them at all. In fact they look amazing if you compare them to really old games. So maybe it's just about what you expect or are used to.

BTW, I also played TP right on the gamepad and while the image is small the visuals get somewhat better. Give it a try.

Wii games on Wii U look almost the same as they do when connecting a Wii to a HD TV using a component cable. I am playing Xenoblade Chronicles now and there are no differences. There is a blurry edge at the bottom of the screen when you are moving the characters but it's exactly the same on both consoles. It doesn't appear on my CRT TV though. I have seen this playing other Wii games on HD screens.

Compared to the 3DS version, nobody can tell you for sure because the game has not been released, but looking at the videos I don't see any visual upgrade and the resolution is actually lower, so it depends on how much you like using a handheld as this game is really huge and how do you like the 3D effect as it's a 3DS exclusive feature.

Wii games looked absolutely gash when they were new, never mind now.

FWIW I was playing TP on my Wii when I bought my Wii U and switched the game over. My perception is that the graphics looked slightly better on the Wii U but not much, certainly they didn't look worse. And the loading times when accessing certain areas seemed quicker.

Interesting choice in avatar there. I have fond memories of that game.

Back on topic. Maybe It's just me but I think Wii games look worst. Maybe it's just going from Wii U games to Wii games and my mind has to adjust.

I don't think it's a big deal either way. The Wii graphics were out of date before it was even released and as HDTVs became more common the difference between the Wii and the competition became more and more marked. I remember in the early days of the Wii people were convinced that eventually the devs would figure it out and the graphics would improve. Never happened, at least to my memory. I always thought that Twilight Princess had some of the best graphics on the system and that was launch game and ran on the Gamecube to boot. So the games are going to look poooopey whatever you do.

The Wii U has enough power to make the sort of games that NIntendo are associated with look good. So that's fine. When I get bored of the Nintendo kick I'm currently on, I'll get a PS4.

After having bought a couple of wii games (and at least tried them out!) I must say they look surprisingly well!

Maybe its my newfound general affinity towards nintendo that makes me look at them this way, but I really have expected worse. Especially 2d platformers look quite good. Of course, going from Wii U to Wii will make you realize the difference, especially Mario Kart looks comparably awful, yet I like it! Another argument why graphics dont matter that much if a game is really good, which cannot be said for most games (I remember playing old xbox games on x360 back in the day and I didnt really like it (save for some games!)