Part IV: The Wii versus Everyone Else Toward's Subrosian's Vision of the Future
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That title is pretentious enough to be a thesis.
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As mandated by System Wars law (or something, do I look like I've read the TOU? What's that? I wrote the SW Intro and rules reminder? Oh.. um.... look fast, an amazing nearly-extinct distraction is right behind you!)
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I could sit here and regurgitate everything I dislike about the Wii, and believe me, later in this thread I probably will. But you deserve something new, something controversial, something to discuss around the water cooler, so without further ado, let me kick Microsoft in the nuts.
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I went on XBLA and downloaded Sonic the Hedgehog. Yes, the original Sega Genesis game, thinking "wow, this will be fun". Feel free to take a look at my gamertag if you don't believe me - 200 of 200 achievement points. And y'know what pisses me off? The emulation is wrong. They cut out the title screen (meaning no level select and no debug mode) and made little changes that throw off the "feel" of the game. I have the SEGA collector's editions on the GCN, and they were far better. On the Wii, you get the actual games when you download them. The *original games*.
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In fact, one of the Wii's best features isn't its ability to play current generation games (which it only has a handful of I personally feel are of note) but its ability to perfectly play last generation games. My vision of the future has always been one without platforms, one where you can download any game you want for a price. Look, let's be real for a second, it's *stupid* that you have to buy 3, 4, 5 systems in a generation to play the games. Why should I be spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on hardware, when what I *really want* is software?
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This, this is what makes the Wii shine:
$10. Yeah, $10, for one of the greatest games of all time, instantly, perfectly emulated, on my Wii. Let me point this out, there are now two platforms that do this: PC and Wii. The Xbox 360 doesn't do it - emulation is only "ok" for 360 games, and XBLA is great for new games, but has imperfect version of old games. Here, on the Wii, they do it right. This, this is one of the best things Nintendo has done.
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I downloaded Mega Man 2. There was no way it was going to work in 480p, no way it was going to have all the original flickering, glitches, weird exploits, etc... oh wait, no, it does. Pixel perfect to the NES version I hold so dear - yet running without any input lag or other such problems on my HDTV.
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"Who cares about old games Sub?" - well, 95% (and that's being generous to current generation games) of the best games every created are from previous generations. In fact, the most well known games of all time are *not* currently on store shelves, nor will they go back into print. Seen Final Fantasy VII at Best Buy lately? I don't think so. Imagine if you will, a future where you can push a button and *download* your favorite old games. That's an amazing possibility - and it's one I want to see. I should add, the Wii plays *every Gamecube game* perfectly. In fact, the majority of them run in 480p, something I've found *not* to be true even of the Xbox 360, a far more powerful system.
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Well done Nintendo - that's the praise you're getting out of me. You know how much I *dislike* the Wii, what Nintendo has done, et cetera - I will praise that - the emulation is where it should be, the library of old titles, while not perfect, is certainly one of its strongest features. Any system where I can play five generations of Zelda (NES, SNES, N64, GCN, and Wii) has done something correctly.
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But Subrosian? Where is the hate?
Oye, yes, my anger, it's coming. Here's Nintendo's problem. I've played the Wii, quite a bit, in fact. But I had not yet run the Wii at home on an HDTV in 480p widescreen. In fact, even when I first got my Wii home, I ran it on the SDTV because I didn't feel like doing the whole "set this up in the living room" thing. But Nintendo? The decision to go with 480p as your maximum resolution... was terrible.
Having it at home, I'm even more upset about it. It's simple math, at 4:3 the Wii's imagine is 720 x 480, if you left it at 480p non-widescreen, on a 720p set, the Wii would have to fill 960 x 720 pixels, not bad at all, a 33% stretch. But if you go 1280 x 720, you have a ton more pixels for the Wii to fill. With 480p widescreen, you're betting on the HDTV to do your picture justice, and well, the internal scalars on some HDTVs are just bad. Microsoft did a smart thing this generation - they put a great scaling chip in the 360. Was it a little pricey? Sure - but I know regardless of whether or not I have a computer monitor, 720p set, or 1080p set it works. Same with my PC. Sony and Nintendo both needed to learn from their past systems and put in scaling chips.
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On the Gamecube you needed an expensive cable. On the PS2, 480p was out of the question for most games, and widescreen was often done by cutting off parts of the picture. The GCN supported 480p - and I'm glad the Wii does (interlacing is a terrible thing for games) but having a scalar chip would have ensured that the Wii's awesome Virtual Console abilities would be usable five, ten, fifteen years from now - as is we simply have to hope the Wii 2 has this feature.
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The other thing that pisses me off about the Wii? No More Heroes, Metroid Prime 3, and Mega Man 9. Huh? You heard me.
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I'm sorry sir, I waved my Wiimote and your head fell off
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I'm not the world's biggest fan of this game - I think the gameplay gets repetitive, and idea of "twisting" the Wiimote is at times wrist-challenging. On the other hand, it's bloody, violent, sexually graphic, offensive, and wholly unapologetic. No, I don't mean that we should automatically have Mario where blood and coins shoot out, or that being violent makes a game inheriently better, it's simply that No More Heroes is unique. This game reminds me of an era in the early Gamecube years when we saw Eternal Darkness, Killer 7, Viewtiful Joe, Pikmin 1 (the challenging version of Pikmin 2 :|), Metroid Prime, Resident Evil, Melee, et cetera. In some ways those games are there on the Wii (sans the Eternal Darknes) - but in some ways they've lost some of their luster.
Part of the appeal was, those games were new experiences at the time - they were *way* different, you weren't finding anything else like them on the shelf. And that's what made them awesome. When I see Strongbad on the Wii, I'm left thinking "this could be done on the PC, but it could not be done as well on another console". I've played point-and-click on joysticks - Willy Beamish on the Sega CD, C&C 3 on the 360 - and it just doesn't work.
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No More Heroes is sort of a tribute to what the Wii *could be* - it could be a system creating more of these kind of games. It's *possible* in fact, I feel it *should happen*. The Wii (and we) deserve more of these type of games. We deserve games you can't get anywhere else - we deserve this kind of attention.
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To put it simply - the Wii's good is that it does emulation and backwards compatibility far better than any other console (the PS3 and 360 are frankly bull compared to the Wii in that regard). However, for current generation games Nintendo plays it far too safe - on a console with creative hardware, we should have more creative new software for long time gamers.
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