Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker's Switch File Size Is Surprisingly Smaller Than On Wii U

I never got this on the Wii U so looking forward to the switch. I might even be go for the 3ds version as well, it would look great on the 3d display.

Astonished we didn't get a 'it doesn't take up mushroom' pun.

I still can't work out how much extra content there is. Is it going to be worth a double dip?

Nintendo compression so that the Switch doesn't have depression.

I still need to finish this. Great looking game too

Nintendo are compression wizards. I'll get this eventually for the new content. But I'm not rushing out for a day one buy. However for the new people, you are in for a treat!

Enjoyed it, but don't see th eneed to double dip for a few new levels.

That compression is nuts though. 1.5GB is nothing these days, weekly updates and patches are larger than that for some games. Sure this isn't photorealstic but indie retro games can be bigger than that on other systems. I'm impressed.

Absolutely loved this on Wii U and will definitely be double dipping on the 13th. One of the releases I can't wait to play again.

Not really surprising if you compress the game and (presumably) increase loading times and lower the assets quality as other Switch ports have done before (Rayman Legends, Dragon Quest, Doom...).

On Wii U they didn't have to do this because a Wii U disc has a 25 GB capacity.

July 13th cannot come soon enough. Captain Toad and Octopath Traveler both release on the same day!

@Alexface We'll likely find out next week via Nintendo Treehouse Live.

Does anybody know if the pixel Mario hide and seek mini game comes with the full release? Or do you need the darn amiibo?

@BlueOcean Rayman Legends has the same quality assets and reduced loading times from the Wii U version ever since System Update 5.0.0 released. The rest didn't have Wii U versions, so I don't see the comparison being relevant here.

So glad this is coming to Switch, already pre-ordered and I rarely pre-order!

I managed to go through this game and collect everything, and I found it to be unbelievably charming. I’m definitely going to double dip, if only for the new stages. Nintendo selling this game for $40 makes me wonder why the heck they priced Donkey Kong at $60.

@thesilverbrick Not that the Donkey Kong price is acceptable, but in my opinion Donkey Kong was a more satisfying game in terms of content.

Remember when Wolfenstein was listed? It was a hell of a lot smaller than it snows now.

@Nintendoforlife Yes, and it was just as satisfying at $50 brand new nearly 5 years ago.

I love this game, definitely getting it on Switch.

@MrGawain the puns on NL have been severely lacking of late.

This game was kind of boring to me, as much as I tried to like it I just never could get into it. Disappointed they're porting this instead of Mario Maker or making something new..

The game is look so cute with Captain Toad & Toadette, but i'm afraid i can't engage the gameplay as strong as other Nintendo games because so far from my experience about Super Mario 3D World (There were a Captain Toad section to get the Stars), the Objection in this game is JUST aiming Captain Toad to Stars, NOTHING else. After i get the Star, i don't think i want to REPLAY the Same Stage again since there is NO Use to get the Hollow Star if you already get them before. By given More than 70 different level, once i finished them All stages, i don't think i want to revisit specific stages because i felt for what reason i have to replay again those stages ?

It's different with Rhythm games by given certain amount of different songs that i can replay the same song without getting bored for choosing same songs over & over again.

Looks amazing. Can’t tell if it is fun to play from watching the gameplay videos out there.

@thesilverbrick I'm quite sure Captain Toad was a budget release on Wii U, so this release is just reflecting that price. Therefore, as both Captain Toad and DK are launching on Switch within the price range they were at on Wii U, the comparison is irrelevant

Awesome to hear. It doesn't really matter for me since I'm getting it physically for the GCU discount, but nice to see smaller file sizes nonetheless.

Never finished this on Wii U, so having it on Switch will finally get to do so.

Captain Toad is def one of the Wii U's hidden gems. I'm not double dipping though.....

Will get this eventually because it is oozing with charm and a delight to play.

Not a bad game but there is no way I am double dipping on this one.

For 20 bucks or something I'd pick it up again, but I'm not buying it at full price. It was a fun little gem though, so if you haven't played it yet, you'll enjoy it.

Mario Tennis is only 1.8 GB and is a game I'd rather have downloaded on my SD card to play anytime, like Captain Toad so this is welcome news. Octopath, Ys VIII and Disgaea 1 I'm going with physical.

I finished the original but never did all of the amiibo challenges, I need to see how many levels they're adding before I buy it again.

And why is there even an article about compression anyway!? We actually have news today

Probably my favorite title on the Wii U, super excited to give this a double-dip and have it on Switch. So adorable. So pure. So freaking fun. Yay, Captain Toad!

Nintendo used Minimize! The Switch's remaining storage rose!

Nintendo, can you share this magic with the developers on other consoles? File sizes this gen are beyond ridiculous.

@MajorasLapdog Nope. DK was a budget title on Wii U. It had an MSRP of $50 when it first released. It was sold on Switch for a higher price than it was when it first released.

Still wondering how they'll rework the Gamepad elements. I know the mine cart levels relied on it, but I can't remember at the moment what other ways it was used. I think you could effect the enemies by touching them.

The mine cart levels actually made the TV view the secondary one, since you couldn't really aim correctly looking at those outside angles.

I have preordered both switch & 3DS as i loved the WiiU version so much. A truly amazing heartearming but surisingly difficult game! Very highy recomended

@thesilverbrick I think they may have an idea of how much people are willing to pay for a game; the probably have focus groups for that. Donkey Kong sounds like (and is) a bigger game, so they can get away with the $60 price tag.

I wonder how big it is on 3DS.

How would anyone describe the difficulty of this game? I’m a very casual gamer and don’t like games to be to difficult.

@Kevember That’s exactly what they did. It’s sleazy and it reeks of gouging.

@Linnybhoy
This is a 'slow-ish' puzzler for most of the levels. The majority of them are basically puzzle boxes for you to figure out.

The slow access speed of the WiiU disc version probably led to them using lots of uncompressed data, organised so it reads in order from a disc. When translated to a download, they probably never bothered to compress it.
Since the Switch will always be on a more randomly readable format, whether that be cart, internal, or SD, it'll still be quicker to access, thus they can compress things a little better, and afford themselves a more organised file structure.

@Linnybhoy
I really liked the Wii U version. It's a fun an relaxing game. Not difficult at all. You can breeze through the levels or try to find every hidden treasure. You can mostly avoid the enemies or beat them easily by pattern recognition and hitting them with a turnip I want to know how much extra content there is in the Switch version because I might buy it again.

@thesilverbrick I guess that's the kind of stuff you can get away with when you produce such great unique games. I hate seeing that side of Nintendo.

@Kevember Same here.

This was one of my FAVORITE games not just on Wii U, but of all my games. So charming!

I have the Wii U version but not played it yet. Once I'm done with DKC Tropical Freeze then I'll play Captain Toad next, am looking forward to it. Definitely full of charm.

@wazlon You'll enjoy it. It's super nifty.

The way Nintendo is able to make their games so small is truly remarkable and proof that either they really do have some secret method, or other companies just don't even TRY to make their games small.

But, the Toad amiibo isn't likely to give me access to Super Mario 3D World levels like it did on the Wii U.

@link3710 I was not only thinking of Wii U and Captain Toad because the ports haven't been released yet. I mean that when you compress a game like that you almost always get negative side effects. For instance, compressed audio sounds worse and if you lower the assets quality and resolution you could get a blurry game like the Switch version of Sonic Forces or Doom. Of course, optimisation can make the same game smaller potentially but most of the times it's a question of lowering quality and extending loading times to reduce the game size.

@Heavyarms55 Most Nintendo games don't have any voice acting nor detailed different textures just like most Mario games. By repeating the same basic textures and without voice acting you can make a relatively big game using little storage space.

Played this so much i borderline wore out the disc on the WiiU. Will buy again for the Switch

Nice bit of streamlining.

Looking forward to finally playing this.

@BlueOcean You're putting a LOT more weight on voice acting than it deserves. Audio can be compressed relatively easy.

@Lizuka @Jayenkai @BlueOcean @rjejr @Ryu_Niiyama @siouxrunner15 - What evidence is there that these file size differences have anything to do with compression? My first thought is that they're simply trimming excess fat like unnecessary system files that were required with the Wii U.

Unless I missed something, compression techniques have not improved much in at least a decade, except when it comes to video and audio. Wii U games don't use video except for maybe a logo (so scratch that idea), and no professional game developer uses uncompressed audio.
From memory, even the original Wii used crappy ADPCM audio compression (which was a lame choice even in the Wii era). Even if you go back and convert an entire ADPCM game soundtrack to the more efficient MP3/AAC, you might save, what, 50MB at best.

Wii U games were also on the eShop, so it doesn't make sense that Nintendo would leave uncompressed data on the disc when they didn't need to. It would make a much larger download on the eShop and in turn, cost them more in bandwidth/storage.

They would be insane to compress graphical assets even more, especially when Nintendo traditionally lags behind in that dept as it is. Nintendo needs its graphics looking as crisp as possible.

I'm inclined to think the savings are a combination of the Switch requiring less overhead/system files on the cartridge, the dumping of Wii U-specific files, and developers going back and trimming any excess files that are no longer required. It's definitely plausible they went back and re-compressed the original audio to a more efficient codec available today, but the savings of that alone would be negligible.

@Prizm Imagine it like song lyrics.

When you read song lyrics on a webpage, it usually lists Verse 1, then Chorus, then Verse 2, but then instead of repeating all the text of the Chorus, it says (Chorus) and you figure out what it means.

Now imagine you've got game data. Level 1 uses object 1, 2, 3 and 4 in various places. Level 2 uses objects 1,5,6 and 7.
Object 1 is like your "Chorus", in that it repeats perfectly each time.

When you're loading from a cart, or from memory, you can easily say "Jump over here, and grab this bit, then hop back for the rest".
But if you're reading data from a disc, where the physical drive has to move from point to point, it slows down the loader quite a bit if it has to keep jumping around so much.

Essentially, you're repeating all the lyrics of the chorus, just so that the reader flows much more smoothly.
On a disc, that makes much more sense. The "steam" is one single flow of data. But it causes a LOT of repetition, and ends up making the whole thing bigger as a result.

On a cart/flash memory, that's not as big of an issue, so you can instead have "Object 1" be its own thing, and the loader can just jump about in the memory of the cart/flash, to grab that object whenever it wants to.
You only need to store it once, and when you amplify that to all the other objects in the game, you'll soon realise how much smaller the overall amount of data becomes.

It's not about "Better Compression", it's more about less repetition.

@BlueOcean Not neccessarily true. The reason Rayman loads faster and is smaller is that the Switch can natively process some Compressed graphics types without decompressing them first. This is why the game was running so slow at launch. Don't know enough to be sure that the Switch supports any compressed audio formats, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

@Prizm I never said anything about compression, I'm just impressed a good looking game in 2018 can be so small, whatever the reason. This is a fully rendered 3D world - I played it on Wii U - not some retro 8-bit looking side scroller. That size is impressive no matter the reason.

@Jayenkai - Thanks, I understand what you're saying, although I'm not convinced Nintendo would've used that method for the Wii U. Maybe they did, but I wouldn't think it's worth it? Unless we're talking about old and slow cd-rom drives like the original Playstation.

You don't want unnecessary duplicated data in your eShop download, so that would mean Nintendo would have to generate two versions of the game (one for eShop and one for disc). That seems unlikely.

It's true that jumping the laser all over the disc is inefficient, but I don't think it saves that much time (a second or two max for every major jump?). Duplicating data would seem to be a lot of effort/waste just to save a few seconds of loading before the level starts. So yeah, I'm not sure on that one.