Is Wii U Compatible With Wii
Wii U hardware back-compat penalises PAL gamers
Fewer options, bugged AV outputs - Digital Foundry investigates.
Sony and Microsoft may have turned their backs on older hardware, but Nintendo'southward arroyo with Wii U is refreshingly unlike. While the new panel is capable of running electric current-gen Hard disk titles, its technical underpinnings are designed in order to fully adjust hardware backwards compatibility with the vintage 2006 Wii. Whatever and all Wii titles and peripherals run with the new hardware. Sadly though it'south not all skillful news - because in our testing we institute a number of display-related issues that may might persuade die-hard purists to keep concord of their existing consoles.
Get-go impressions propose that we are indeed getting the full hardware dorsum-compat feel, with the added advantage that for the first fourth dimension players are able to run their Wii games via the digitally lossless precision offered by an HDMI output. But it'due south also fair to say that this is pretty much the only advantage offered by the new hardware - and even and so the experience may be sub-optimal for some owing to the locked limited-range RGB output, which produces washed-out colours on many displays.
We tested out dorsum-compat on a PAL Wii U unit with ii very different test games. First upward, Resident Evil iv Wii Edition - chosen for no other reason than its 480p/PAL60 support. Calculation to the appeal was the fact we'd never played it and a used price of just £4 was the icing on the cake. This was joined past Platinum Games' celebrated MadWorld, a fantastic, insane piece of ultra-violence that we picked up 2d-manus for just £2 (both titles sourced from UK store Cash Converters, for those interested). We opted for this one because the original game featured no progressive scan back up whatever - a bordered 576i was the simply pick - and we were keen to come across what the Wii U's progressive-but HDMI output would practise when confronted with interlaced textile.
The results are intriguing. On a PAL unit of measurement, where 480p and PAL60 were supported in the original games, Wii U automatically opts for this set-up on HDMI - whether the user wants it or not. While nosotros think it's a logical way to keep, the fact is that some Wii gamers prefer to employ 576i. PAL-optimised titles may accept a hit to frame-rate, but they brand up for it with around 17 per cent more than resolution. What is clear is that the choices users had on their older hardware have been taken abroad from them on Wii U when at that place's absolutely no reason that the software couldn't have been designed to continue everyone happy.
"Important AV options are omitted from the Wii menu, with the PAL console unable to upscale to HD resolutions or run in progressive browse over component - an issue that doesn't seem to touch NTSC hardware."
The situation is also curious for titles where this is no progressive scan support in the original software at all. Despite the system settings being locked to 480p, the Wii runs these 576i titles at 576p at 50Hz, deinterlacing the output on the fly. The overall quality of the deinterlacing isn't too bad at all, but, similar to hardware back-compat PlayStation 3s, in that location is some noticeable shimmering on fine detail where the interpolation doesn't quite produce the right result. Games similar MadWorld - which have no resolution boost - remain letterboxed and in a squashed aspect ratio, even though fairly unproblematic code could have been introduced to check for PAL borders and re-scale the epitome accordingly.
Overall, despite the limited-range RGB issue and the fact that you can't choose between 60Hz or PAL optimisations, Wii back-compat via HDMI works pretty well. Having ascertained that, nosotros decided to try the component output in social club to sample dorsum-compat without the limited-range RGB issues presented past the digital output. All the same, we constitute that the display settings options in the PAL Wii U system menu appear to have absolutely no affect on the output the unit produces when switching into back-compat mode. On our United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland unit of measurement, nosotros were lumbered with 576i only - no PAL60, no 480p, both of which were supported in the original Wii hardware. We weren't able to fully test this out on our NTSC unit owing to a lack of software (though nosotros have a test game en route with our Canadian Wii Mini review unit) merely the Wii menu itself scales up to Hard disk drive resolutions via component and so we have little dubiousness that games are supported too. Bizarrely, not-HDMI PAL users are penalised for reasons we can't quite fathom.
Other back-compat issues surface when dealing with the Virtual Console. For starters, transferring purchases beyond from the Wii to the Wii U is a bizarrely involved procedure. The process involves downloading the transfer tool on both your Wii U and the erstwhile Wii. You then have to prepare the SD card (with at least 512MB of infinite on information technology) on the Wii U then insert it into the quondam panel. The transfer tool then copies all of your data (Miis, purchase history, downloads, relieve games) to the SD card. You then have to put it back in the Wii U and copy all of the data back over. Weirdly, you need to have net admission in society to complete the process. 1 of our colleagues was hugely frustrated by always failing at the last stage of this drawn-out performance, with the Wii U itself offering no explanation whatsoever for what the event may have been, and network issues turned out to be the problem. Also a little irritating is that despite shipping a console with 32GB of flash, onboard Wii storage limits are the same palty 512MB we had to put upwards with on the original hardware.
"As expected, in that location'southward no magical native HD resolution rendering in HDMI manner, but the upscaling from 480p and conversion of 576i games is handled fairly well."
A couple of further words of advice - bear in mind that the Wii U may have total hardware backwards compatibility with the Wii, but the GameCube is not supported. If y'all're using the vivid GameCube controller for your VC titles, you're going to demand to get out and purchase a Archetype Controller or preferably the Archetype Controller Pro to play those games on Wii U. Hackers have already managed to kick GC lawmaking on the Wii U via a back-compat hack, suggesting that the hardware is perfectly capable of running GameCube titles, but the lack of a concrete interface with the quondam controller is the sticking point. Surprisingly - and annoyingly - there is no support whatsoever for the Wii U GamePad or the Pro Controller on Virtual Console titles, and so it comes every bit no surprise to notice that your retro collection can't exist run on the tablet display - a real shame. Instead, Wii U-enabled VC software will be released later and this is set to include GameCube releases.
Bearing in listen how fundamental backwards compatibility is to the overall hardware design of the Wii U, nosotros came away ambivalent and a piddling disappointed most Nintendo'south implementation here. What users get is the accented bare minimum, with PAL users in detail forced to put up with a number of bizarre issues that we find difficult to believe weren't picked upwardly during the initial stages of the Os's evolution. Nosotros can but hope that Nintendo patches this all upwards sooner rather than later. While they're at information technology, a full-range RGB choice and the power to run video over HDMI and audio over the AV port would be handy too.
However, frustrations and disappointments aside, we were genuinely surprised at simply how inexpensive second-hand Wii titles are right now - and this offers up an interesting opportunity for owners of the new console who never bought the previous hardware. Look beyond the giant pixels and in that location's a substantial library of cracking games you can tap into at astounding prices - a highly worthwhile extra that's well worth further investigation for new Wii U owners.
Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-wii-u-backwards-compatibility-analysis
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