The emulator obviously upscales. Wii U outputs everything at your selected HD resolution. Anything that doesn't conform is scaled to match that resolution before being sent to your display.
And while Yoshi's Island DS is 2D, other regions outside of North America have other games like Mario Kart DS.
Footage of the European Wii U Virtual Console download of that one clearly shows that it's rendered at its native resolution, closely approximating the appearance of the native side of that screenshot that I linked to earlier on. The sharp, crisp, clear graphics which HD rendering would allow, aren't evident in any shape or form. It's a return to not even being able to make out what banners and such say, and this time, you're not playing on a tiny screen that masks the low resolution to a great degree.
Too bad, since it would've looked great had it appeared like this (True widescreen, even).
The emulator obviously upscales. Wii U outputs everything at your selected HD resolution. Anything that doesn't conform is scaled to match that resolution before being sent to your display.
And while Yoshi's Island DS is 2D, other regions outside of North America have other games like Mario Kart DS.
Footage of the European Wii U Virtual Console download of that one clearly shows that it's rendered at its native resolution, closely approximating the appearance of the native side of that screenshot that I linked to earlier on. The sharp, crisp, clear graphics that HD rendering would allow aren't evident in any shape or form.
Too bad, since it would've looked great had it appeared like this (True widescreen, even).
Thanks, the normal way I embed videos doesn't seem to ever work around here, so I just left clickable links.
Anyone that has seen the full visual potential of 3D DS titles is sadly going to have a hard time accepting how they appear on the Wii U.
Yet with that one, it looks so rough on even just the dim original DS with its tiny screen at its native resolution, that I wouldn't be shocked to see Nintendo just sit on Metroid Prime Hunters on the Wii U despite the beauty lurking under the surface, just waiting for them to officially unlock someday so that it can realize its full potential.
I see the point but Nintendo's idea was clearly to get an 1:1 port of the game. The game looks exactly the same as it was years ago.
However, it would be nice to have an option to choose.
The point was to bring it to the Wii U. That it's running at its native resolution is likely a technical limitation.
Emulated Nintendo 64 titles rendered at 480p on both the GameCube and Wii, and the Wii U counterpart appears to render in full HD. Nintendo surely would love to be providing a more attractive result here as well, since something like Mario Kart DS as it stands today is going to deter many people when they see how it translates to their big-screen.
Hopefully whatever technical hurdle there is, is surmountable in time. Native resolution for a DS game on the Wii U surely isn't a deliberate design decision that they were aiming for, but one that simply couldn't be helped.
I also suspect that it's one reason why these have taken so long to finally surface, although sadly, they clearly weren't able to fully realize what they likely were hoping to accomplish.
My TV has a neat ZOOM option so I've been playing Yoshi's Island using the original DS screen but with the TV zoomed in so it cuts those unnecessary DS canvas borders...
But I must say this was an awful game to launch the service. Something like SUPER MARIO 64 DS would be much better with the game being displayed in full on the TV and the map thingy on the gamepad (like a lot of Wii U games).
I see the point but Nintendo's idea was clearly to get an 1:1 port of the game. The game looks exactly the same as it was years ago.
However, it would be nice to have an option to choose.
The point was to bring it to the Wii U. That it's running at its native resolution is likely a technical limitation.
Emulated Nintendo 64 titles rendered at 480p on both the GameCube and Wii, and the Wii U counterpart appears to render in full HD. Nintendo surely would love to be providing a more attractive result here as well, since something like Mario Kart DS as it stands today is going to deter many people when they see how it translates to their big-screen.
Hopefully whatever technical hurdle there is, is surmountable in time. Native resolution for a DS game on the Wii U surely isn't a deliberate design decision that they were aiming for, but one that simply couldn't be helped.
I also suspect that it's one reason why these have taken so long to finally surface, although sadly, they clearly weren't able to fully realize what they likely were hoping to accomplish.
Wait what? N64 titles in full HD? i just got Mario 64 on the E-shop and it looks very much like 480p, at an aspect ratio of 4:3 to boot
Thanks, the normal way I embed videos doesn't seem to ever work around here, so I just left clickable links.
Anyone that has seen the full visual potential of 3D DS titles is sadly going to have a hard time accepting how they appear on the Wii U.
Yet with that one, it looks so rough on even just the dim original DS with its tiny screen at its native resolution, that I wouldn't be shocked to see Nintendo just sit on Metroid Prime Hunters on the Wii U despite the beauty lurking under the surface, just waiting for them to officially unlock someday so that it can realize its full potential.
If Metroid Prime Hunters looked something like that on the Wii U, it really wouldn't be that bad. In fact, it seems to hold up very nicely in comparison to something like Mario Kart DS.
My TV has a neat ZOOM option so I've been playing Yoshi's Island using the original DS screen but with the TV zoomed in so it cuts those unnecessary DS canvas borders...
But I must say this was an awful game to launch the service. Something like SUPER MARIO 64 DS would be much better with the game being displayed in full on the TV and the map thingy on the gamepad (like a lot of Wii U games).
Haha, I think that'd be great if the launch games for the DS and N64 VCs were Super Mario 64 DS and Super Mario 64. So many options.
I don't agree at all. The amount of options is pretty insane. I think it was a quality effort.
Also, I don't think DS Virtual Console could even be on 3ds. The 3ds can barely run those gba ambassador games, so how could DS be on it? Sounds kind of idiotic to me.
Controls cant be remapped, display at 240p, cant play with any controller besides the gamepad, and somehow you think the options are 'insane'? It's almost the lowest effort they could have gone to. Lol, only with console players I tell ya...
Also, it might surprise you, but I play DS games on my 3DS all the time. I know right? I wonder how it could possibly handle them.
It makes no sense that they started with Yoshi's Island DS, which is one of the hardest to get the experience right on a different system. They should, at first, stick with games where you play primarily on the lower or upper screen, making the setup where the lower screen is on the GamePad's touch screen make perfect sense. They should also render the 3D games higher, like in that screenshot, and allow for keymapping. However, why not put retail DS games on the 3DS eshop as downloads too? Seems like that'd be a lot simpler and work well. Though then again, they also never bothered making any Virtual Boy games for 3DS VC, and that seemed obvious!
Yoshi's Island DS could've been a much better experience had they provided a zoom option. We'd still have a lot of pillarboxing, but just like how any nice arcade classic from years gone by with a 3:4 vertical aspect ratio can still be fun, it would've been fully enjoyable if the picture was at least as big as it possibly could be.
Wait what? N64 titles in full HD? i just got Mario 64 on the E-shop and it looks very much like 480p, at an aspect ratio of 4:3 to boot
Nintendo was never going to hack it for 16:9. That's a trick that homebrew programs often allow when emulating 3D polygonal games, which frequently works well for many different platforms from the past. But it doesn't work with every title and with titles that it does work with, it can introduce issues here and there.
But it is rendering it in HD, like any good N64 homebrew emulator would do these days. Comparing it with programs on things like the Ouya and the Wii mode download that renders in 480p and is then upscaled by the Wii U, clearly shows that this provides a picture past 480p for Super Mario 64.
On the screen options screen, there is an option to smooth the graphics out (top right with the right stick). Does this help?
I've only watched videos of the Wii U DS emulator in action since I was concerned heading in that it may not of been implemented to my liking, but the few reports I saw of this option, said that all it did was cause the pixelated mess to end up a blurry one.
But that was a European forum and they were talking about Mario Kart DS. It may be more pleasant looking with a 2D title like Yoshi's Island DS.
Umm you can play Wii games on the Wii U, making Wii games on the Wii U VC pointless.
With the popularity of digital distribution, it never is pointless.
Furthermore, Nintendo made their money off the vast majority of Wii retail software long ago. Introducing downloads just as they've done in recent weeks allows them once again to make money off such popular assets as Super Mario Galaxy 2, while catering to the growing demands for digital distributed software options.
Something like SUPER MARIO 64 DS would be much better with the game being displayed in full on the TV and the map thingy on the gamepad (like a lot of Wii U games).
I'm glad they launched it with something original, but I agree that something else like New Super Mario Bros. DS would've been best.
Super Mario 64 DS though is going to be pretty rough looking at its native resolution, very much unlike the very attractive result we now have for the N64 original.
And the touch screen camera control would also be problematic, since they clearly aren't doing any logical editing here with software to map something like dropping your stored powerup in NSMBDS with a button (The report I've read of the Japanese download, confirms that it still requires you to activate it with the touch screen), or at least allowing us to map a physical button ourselves to a specific area of the touch screen.
Having to reach all the way over to the corner of the 4:3 area of the Wii U's touch screen, well inside the edge of the Wii U's 16:9 gamepad display, just to manually control the camera all the time is going to finish off any enjoyment Super Mario 64 DS may of had to offer. We don't even have a touch screen stretching option that we could enable for something unimportant like the map in this game that doesn't really need to be stuck in its original 4:3 aspect ratio, to bring touch inputs closer to our thumb on the Wii U's wider aspect ratio screen.
Also, I don't think DS Virtual Console could even be on 3ds. The 3ds can barely run those gba ambassador games, so how could DS be on it? Sounds kind of idiotic to me.
It could work just as DSi games work on the 3DS from the 3DS eShop.
And the 3DS was able to fully run those GBA downloads. Nothing was emulated, the ARM9 that also handles DS compatibility is natively running GBA code. The issue seems to have been one of screen resolution, with the GBA's 240 × 160 display not translating very well to the resolution of the 3DS. But there were no emulation issues present there.
While that's part of it, the issue is more so with its native rendering resolution, since as shown, DS games can look pretty amazing in their own right when that constraint from the original DS hardware is lifted.
I'm not sure just why it is, but some reason merely upscaling a 3D game from earlier generations to HD doesn't typically result in a very pleasing appearance like it does with an attractive 2D game.
The trick to get an older 3D console or handheld game composed of polygons looking its best on today's HD displays via emulation, is by increasing the resolution that it's rendered at.
Can even make a big difference with more modern 480p titles.
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Topic: DS VC feels a bit disappointingly unpolished
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