There is one thing that Nintendo does not get enough credit for

So here we are, all getting excited about Sony finally maybe allowing us to play PS1 and PS2 Classics on the PS4, and getting all gung-ho about Microsoft's backwards compatibility plans for the Xbox One, which rely on imprecise emulation, and will never support every Xbox 360 game anyway.

And then there is Nintendo. The Wii U is the only console that offered full backwards compatibility with its predecessor right out of the box. This is in fact very important.

• Right off the bat, the Wii U was compatible with the 1000+ games on the Wii
• The Wii U featured full compatibility with Wii controllers and accessories.Since Wii U games actively use Wii controllers for multiplayer games, there was no need to go out and buy more controllers- your controllers from the Wii worked just fine.
• The Wii U was also the only console where your digital library on the Wii transferred over without issues.This is actually ironic- where people criticized Nintendo for their lack of an account system, citing potential insecurity of digital purchases, Nintendo was actually the only company that bother to maintain your purchases across hardware generations (Microsoft and Sony both just said **** it).

The Wii U offered full, 100%, out of the box, native compatibility with Wii's software, without any restrictions or limitations. Everything worked. Compared to how clueless Microsoft and especially Sony are this generation in this area? Nintendo was running circles around them before the Xbox One and PS4 even had a chance to launch.

@charizard1605: but what sucks is that I still couldn't play skyward sword, donkey kong returns, super mario galaxy, or Metroid prime 3 with a regular controller, like the wii u pro controller

You couldn't do that because it is impossible on a hardware level- when the system is running Wii games, it thinks it is a Wii. A Wii did not know what a Wii U Pro or a Wii U Gamepad is, nor how to communicate with it, so naturally, you can't play those games with those controllers.

Nintendo did manage to patch that functionality in for some select Wii games when they started selling those on the eShop iirc.

Nintendo is the only one out there, that does BC right. I like it. I bought a WiiU. Was able to play SMG2 because of BC.

@charizard1605: Yeah you're absolutely right. I hope they continue it with NX.

Would you say you liked your Wii U more for Wii games or for Wii U games ?

I loved playing SMG myself on WiiU, still have to play two =0

Oh man, you don't know what's coming :p

Galaxy 2 is so unbelievably good.

Duh, because they were designed around the Wii mote. Out of all those Donkey kong was the only one to have bad motion controls

But Tropical freeze made that game redundant anyway :)

@R4gn4r0k: I think the Wii was alright. I mean, for all its casul things it had going for itself, there were still 3rd party developers making games for it. Some were wonderful.

It's just something that didn't happen with the WiiU. And I think it's something that will put the Wii in front of the WiiU. One thing though, WiiU got Bayonetta 2 and Wonderful 101.

Gun to my head, I'd pick Wii. I would miss out on PG's goodness, but the weird, wii specific games that came out of that system, was something I hoped for, with the coming of the WiiU. It started with ZombiU, and ended with Affordable Space Adventures. Not much inbetween, and that's a damned shame.

Because it has Yoshi in it ? :D

It was actually one of the first games I got after getting a Wii U. But I wanted to play the first one to start with.

I'm gonna get on it soon. Possibly in the next days or so. I really loved SMG 1... Yeah, need to play it soon.

@Chozofication: yeah, im just pointing out that this is why i dont care about Wii U backwards compatibility.

I've started to realize this in the last few weeks, the Wii was actually like the Vita before the Vita was a thing (and it was actually supported and successful). Sure, mainstream third party support, especially western support, migrated from it en masse after being spooked by some failures, but it thrived on weird, niche games (the sort of stuff we would call indie today), as well as Japanese games.

For still being the epitome of good game design all those years later. It's almost as if people want to find as many ways to downplay them as possible these days. They are shit at hardware, but they are the best with software. Even if their performance this gen was a bit shit, they still managed to clown the competition.

I really don't get this obsession with BC. I suppose it's nice to have it if, as is the case with Wii U, it's already built in. I absolutely have precisely zero excitement about playing PS1 or PS2 games on my PS4 it is something I will never do.

My idea of decent, innovative backwards compatibility would be to have PS4 and Xbox One come with chips that automatically support their last gen titles and convert them to 1080p on the fly making them sort of remaster-to-go machines.

I sent this business idea to Sony and MS who took time out from counting all the money they were going to make from remasters by sending me a short letter that said 'Yeah.... no'.

I really wanted new experiences from Wii. Like I got with gamecube: Double Dash was a double barrel of fun ! Pikmin was a great new IP.

But the Wii just let me down in that regard. Wii Sports was a really shallow new IP. Most of the new stuff felt shallow to me.

But it was a lot more popular than WiiU yes, the IP and control scheme did go over well with a lot of people. More than the tablet controller/Is it part of a the wii/thingamajig

I really like the new IP I'm seeing this gen. And Nintendo's partnership with Platinum Games: "Hey, can you guys make Star Fox ? We're gonna work on some NX games over here"

Sure, they deserve that praise.

Nintendo gets more than enough credit for their game design, they've been criticized because a lot of the stupid decisions they've made, even on the software side should be considered beneath them. Never mind that too much of the same thing, and not enough new things from the same company gets tiring.

In the worst case, BC subtracts nothing from the package, in the absolute best case, it actively adds to and enhances the experience. As I outlined in the OP, BC on Wii U was about more than just playing old Wii games on the Wii U, it meant not having to buy new controllers, it meant your digital purchases carried over, it meant you didn't have to rebuy games. All of that has to count for something.

Well I look at it differently.

BC is meaningless to me. I kept my old consoles and still I haven't played a whole game on them since this gen began. I haven't even put a Wii disk in my Wiiu..not once.

Its true, Nintendo is always putting the gamers first. Even when they give you weak hardware, they are actually trying to get more developers to take more risk and make cool games that dont have to sell super crazy. Nintendo is pretty smart for being such a smaller company compared to the giants its up against.

NX might be different though, i kinda want them to copy what Microsoft is maybe doing, where you insert your disc, it reads it to verify its the game, and then it allows you to download the game from the eShop. I think would be a very cool way to do it. But i have no clue how they are going to do it. They might not even do BC this gen and just let Wii U and N3DS stand with the NXs.

Again, at worst, the BC takes away nothing from the experience. At best it adds to it. The ability to play your old games out of the box is great, yes, but as I outlined in the OP, with the Wii U, the benefits went beyond just that. It meant not having to buy new controllers, it meant your digital purchases carried over, it meant you didn't have to rebuy games. All of that has to count for something.

Yeah it counts for something if it's already built into the console. It's probably a good motivation for adopting the new console early. But really, you don't have to rebuy games or worry about controllers unless you sell your old console. I still have my PS3 and 360. Wii U BC is at least the real deal though, unlike what MS are doing with X1 people don't even know what games it will support which is just half assed.

@blueinheaven: See, with the controllers, you do have to worry, because when you buy an Xbox One or a PS4, your Xbox 360 or PS3 controllers won't run with them. On a Wii U, your Wii controllers do work with the system (and can be used as primary controllers for most games). That's saving money right there.

But yeah, BC is good if it is built into the box. The way Xbox One is doing it? I appreciate it, I really do, but eh. I don't know where they would go with it, so yeah, I agree there.

There are many who think Nintendo make kiddy crap and completely dismiss their games for your Witcher 3's/Fallouts because it has an open world, story and adult themes. A motivated Nintendo produces some of the best products in this medium. Just that why would they be motivated with a console like the WiiU? lol. Their sameyness aside. There's no doubt their consoles are mediocre, but that's not what I'm talking about. Outside a select few people on a gaming forum, most people look at Nintendo games as good time kids games. And the 'serious' games are what everyone else does. That's not to say Kirby games aren't that, but people tend to lump it all together don't they.

I think there's bigger challenges to BC than having functional emulators, it's how each company handles rights.

Take Nintendo for instance, nothing is illegal about allowing for BC through emulation as long as the software was acquired legally. Yet I find it strange that while it's perfectly fine to pop a Wii disc in a Wii U to play it Nintendo can't migrate the Wii's digital catalog to the Wii U, and what they did migrate users still need to jump through loops. I'm curious as to why this is. Is it due to terms of the original publishing rights contract? Is it because Nintendo is just trying to make another buck, what?

Even as someone pointed out the other day on the Vita, it plays PS1 games but making them play on a Vita requires downloading the game to the PS3 but not installing the pre-install file, and transferring that on the Vita, install there. Reason I heard they just don't offer them on the Vita digital store is there's not enough manpower to go around to test the games to make sure they run before publishing it digitally on that system storefront, and not because they need to go out and require publishing rights to put it on the storefront.

Legally, I can't imagine there is a restriction to BC if people have a legal claim to the ROM/ISO, as the emulation itself isn't legally restricted. Makes me very curious why MS is going through the hoops of acquiring publishers permission to allow for BC on Xbox One.

This has me wondering, I can see some similarities:

They both had some whacky controls next to a quite standard button layout.

Vita had the read touch pad, front touch screen, motion controls, it had the camera. Wii had a lot of whacky stuff like that too.

also they both had Little King's Story !!!! =0

@lamprey263: The reason the Wii U silos Wii software is neither because of rights issues, nor because of a desire to resell the games. it is because the Wii was pirated and open to exploits, and Wii games running on the Wii U could cause similar buffer overflows and inroads into the Wii U, leading to piracy and homebrew on that console too. To prevent that, the Wii has been completely sandboxed. Functionally, this shows up as a Wii that boots up separately within your Wii U when you want to play it.

The PS1 and PS Vita anecdote is also false- all those games are available on the PSN Store for the Vita in EU. The reason that a lot of them are not in NA does ultimately come down to rights (more accurately, to SCEA not bothering to negotiate those rights for Vita).

They also both had Muramasa.

Cause Microsoft from my understanding is adding them to their digital store. insert disc, verification finalizes, then boom, download starts.

As for Nintendo not releasing all the same games from Wii eShop to Wii U eShop, its that licensing has to be agreed upon on again.

Yeah and that is one of the reasons why the Wii U's architecture is such shite. They had to stick with the aging POWER PC architecture just to offer native BC. One of the biggest reasons why third parties were put off by the system in comparison to both the PS4 and XB1 being X86.

Also, the Wii U is BC with arguably one of the worst Nintendo consoles ever released (Sales notwithstanding).

Sure, you can applaud them for offering native BC out of the box, but realize that sticking with a similar architecure as the original Wii was more of a detriment than a benefit.

@charizard1605: w00t ? why have I never heard of that game ?

Is it in the Vita PSN store ?

Yep. It was also a PS+ game I think a year or so ago?

It looks interesting. And stylized games like that can look incredible on Vita.

I see it was not published in Europe. I'll check it out if I can find it in the PSN store.

@charizard1605: The Wii U being BC with a system with a horrible rep isnt the best way of trying to say they did something right. Its not important at all. Its why no one cares. Hence, the sales.

When it was announced that the original Wii was BC with Gamecube games it was worth celebrating, because the GC was actually an excellent console unlike the Wii.

The games weren't originally designed to utilize those types of controllers. Heck, Skyward Sword's game design was to show how good motion+ was with the Wiimote. Mario Galaxy needs the pointer...

@jcrame10: By that logic, it sucks that you can't play GC games (that weren't ported, such as TP, LEGO Star Wars I and II, RE4, Pikmin, Metroid Prime) with a Wii Remote.

Wait a minute...

So, the Wii having GC support, despite that being why Wii was so underpowered in comparison to competition, is fine because "Cube was an awesome console", but Wii U having Wii support sucks, not just because of it causing the WIi U to be underpowered, but because of your own hatred of the console?

Just what? By that logic, you should be slamming the Wii for having GC support. I don't give a damn how much you "like" the GC. It doesn't justify inconsistency.

@jcrame10:

To silence you, the IR tech used in the Wii remote for Metroid Prime 3 and the 1 to 1 motion tech used for Skyward Sword are fundamental pieces essential to the functionality of the games, asking the devs to re-engineer the games in order to implement the use of dual joysticks is just unrealistic.

@mariokart97: am I supposed to care?

Lol I don't give a shit about those games as long as motion controls exist in them. That was my entire point.

And wii motion is broken, that's why they came out with wii motion plus. Which still was terrible for most of the time of skyward sword I hear

I never said it was fine, just stating that the in my opinion the GC's library is far superior to the Wii's library.

Plus, back in 2005 when they announced all this stuff most of us didn't realize that the Wii being natively BC with GC games was going to hold back the Wii's performance. Now we know better. That is why I'm hoping Nintendo doesn't implement native BC with Wii U games on the NX.

That's great, but it's not exactly an impressive accomplishment since the Wii U uses the same PowerPC architecture as its predecessors. In fact, there was no good reason for it not to support GameCube games as well since it is based on the same exact architecture. And yet, here we are today still without digital or retail GameCube compatibility unless you hack your system.

I wouldn't really call MS and Sony clueless because they were working with a completely fresh slate with completely different hardware. What Microsoft managed to accomplish is actually a software marvel which still baffles most people because the Xbox One in no way seems powerful enough to emulate 360 games.

Let's see what happens when NX comes out, and whether it supports BC as well. If Nintendo switches to x86 and still incorporates Wii U BC, it will absolutely deserve kudos. I don't see Nintendo ever investing in software BC beyond emulators for old games, so it will all depend on whether they basically integrate a Wii U into the NX.

Two things:

1) As others have noted, BC that isn't accomplished through emulation requires older compatible architecture. This is an anchor holding back tech advancement, and requires resources which could be put to better use elsewhere. With Nintendo, I suppose this isn't an issue considering they don't believe in better specs in their machines, but let's not act like BC doesn't have its drawbacks and only presents benefits. It comes with sacrifices, it's just that Nintendo's philosophy is compatible with them.

2) BC is a convenience. It's nice to have, but I'd much rather have that attention and effort put into a better system than a lesser one just so I won't have to get off my ass every once and a while to hook up my old consoles. I will admit however that it would be great to have arcade games translated on PSN and One. Nintendo's due that credit.

BC can be a great thing for people that missed out on a system for a gen.

never owned a PS3 last gen, so if the PS4 had BC it would have been a godsend and buying a PS4 would practically be buying two consoles for the price of one for me.

How do some of you guys not find backwards compatibility a problem? Isn't gaming your favourite hobby?

Right now, my PS3 is being used as the Silent Hill machine. That's all its doing this month, and what's worse is I'm playing the PSN version. I mean, I log into PSN on the PS4 every other freaking day, why the hell do I have to go back to 2006 to jam a digital game? And you know what sucks? I have an original copy of Silent Hill 2 that I want to play next. That means I have to swap out of my PS3 for the PS2 sometime soon. That's lame.

I mean we're up to the point where consoles are pretty much catching up to PCs in terms of convenience in digital delivery with the latest titles. I'm willing to bed a significant amount of people bought Halo 5 through the Xbox store. I know I did.

That was actually the main reason I got a WiiU, was for BC. I never had a Wii, and having access to Xenoblade, Super Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword (among many others) was great for me and I probably would have waited to get a WiiU if it wasn't for that.

Right now I'm torn between getting a PS3 and PS4. I'll probably get the PS3 and wait to get the PS4 in a couple years. But it would be so much nicer if I could have access to both gaming libraries with one system...

BS. It was a given that the Wii was going to be underpowered ever since announcement of the final name. You'd have "known better" back then too. You only didn't know because Nintendo left everyone in the dark when they announced it as "Revolution."

You could argue it's one of the reasons why it's still worth having a Wii-U. Even if the games made specifically on that platform come at a sporadic rate, there's still a great wealth of classic titles you can fall back on. While I never buy a new system with the hopes of playing older games, I appreciate that I can play older titles without having to worry about getting an older system.

It's an incredibly underappreciated feature.

Ever since I bought my PS2, BC has been extremely important to me.

And if my Wii didn't run homebrew software, and if I had a Gamecube, my Wii would have been sold off or put in storage (it's the special red edition).

There is another notable bonus with BC compatibility, you can stream Wii games with HDMI cables instead of the more convoluted component cables.

If I want to play old games, I'll play them in the old console. That's just me. I have too much current gen stuff to play. Cant imagine playing last gen games when I'm skipping current gen games I want to play due to not enough time to play them

. *shrug*