The Official Wii U Thread (Nintendo Network IDs here!)

[Canas Renvall]

I would've made this thread when the Wii U launched on Sunday, but I've been busy playing it!

The beginning of the 8th generation of home consoles has begun!

I got the Deluxe set on Saturday at midnight, and I've been fiddling around with it ever since.

Initial impressions are pretty positive, but with some small drawbacks.

+ Nintendo games in HD (Dolphin emulator notwithstanding). Woo!
+ Nintendo Land. Honestly, I'm enjoying this just as much as I enjoyed Wii Sports when that came packaged with the Wii. It really shows off the abilities of the Gamepad.
+ The Gamepad itself. The screen is nice, not too big or small. It's very smooth and responsive, and is used in lots of interesting ways as shown in Nintendo Land and ZombiU. It's also quite light!
+ The Wii Data Transfer is simple and very easy to do, and everything (Game saves, all Miis, any DLC, Wii Shop purchase history so you can redownload games not on your Wii at the time of the transfer, Wii Shop Channel downloads AND game saves barring one WiiWare game called LostWinds 1) transfers over with no issues. WiiConnect 24 channels (Everybody Votes Channel, Nintendo Channel, News Channel, etc.) do not transfer, and are left intact on the Wii. Anything not transferred is not deleted and is still completely usable on the Wii.
+ No proprietary memory. Whether you have the 8GB Basic or 32GB Deluxe, you can grab any SD card or powered external USB hard drive (up to 2TB I believe) for storage of game saves, eShop downloads, etc. Much cheaper than proprietary hard drives or memory cards. (NOTE: if you have a USB HDD you'd like to use, partition it. The Wii U will format everything to be only usable with the Wii U unless you make a partition to only format that portion for the Wii U.)
+ A wide variety of launch titles. Be they ports, remakes, multiplat releases or original titles, there are games for everyone. Just Dance 4, Nintendo Land, New Super Mario Bros. U, Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge, Assassin's Creed III, Trine 2: Director's Cut, etc.
- The day 1 update took forever for me, but I assume this was just because of Nintendo's servers overloading from all the people updating at the same time. Also, updates everywhere. I updated when I started the system, when I tried using the eShop, and when I loaded up Just Dance 4, New Super Mario Bros. U, Nintendo Land AND ZombiU. They didn't take very long, but still a minor annoyance.
- Nintendo Network ID tied to system still, not an account. This is pretty silly, especially in this day and age. Hopefully they can change this in an update, but to have that risk now is pretty stupid.

So far, this is a very nice system. I'm excited for the eventual first party releases, and I'm glad to see some serious push for third party support. Hoping to see Bayonetta in SSB4 now that the IP is first-party.

Also, I wonder how EA will support the Wii U. Ever since the Origin online deal fell through with Nintendo, they've been stamping their feet and it feels like they've been trying to sabotage the console.
- Caught paying people to troll the Wii U on message boards
- Releasing ME3, then announcing the ME Trilogy with all DLC as PS360 only
- Constantly talking down the console
- Gimping Madden '13 with no Infinity engine, which is present on PS360

Way to be a big baby, worst company of 2012! Stay classy, EA!

Here I will update Nintendo Network IDs as people post them!
THIA Username - Nintendo Network ID
Canas Renvall - CanasRenvall

[Dracarys]

Bayonetta IP isn't first party, no version of the ME trilogy has all the DLC, all versions have different amounts and the first version of EA titles on other platforms have had missing features, hardly targeting WiiU in such a practice.

Just saying...

[Vito]

Anyone has tried a Wii RE title on the system yet? Any improvements?

[Dracarys]

Anyone has tried a Wii RE title on the system yet? Any improvements?

There will not be any, to play Wii games on WiiU you need set the system to 'Wii mode' where it essentially turns itself into a Wii.

[Pikminister]

The guys at NeoGaf are notorious for going bonkers about stuff like this. So I'm gonna quote what some users wrote on the matter and who own Wii U consoles & tested Wii games on it.

The Wii U's wii mode output actually puts a slight black border around all sides of the image. The nature of the scaling artifacts is different from the output of my Wii (using component, not composite). Colors on the Wii U side are more vibrant, less washed out by the upscale. I am not sure if one or the other is "cleaner" in terms of upscaling artifacts. But the Wii U side looks less stretched and distorted.

Verdict: I would assume the Wii U is upscaling the image before sending it to the TV. The output looks nothing like the TV's own scaler on the vanilla Wii's input.

Another take:

I did some comparison testing earlier. The Wii output on Wii u via HDMI is definitely crisper with richer color than the regular Wii via component on my setup. Sounds better too. It's not a huge difference, but noticeable.

Another one:

I played some Xenoblade and klonoa earlier today and noticed the colors looked somewhat crisper, and things seemed less blurry. I immediately noticed the difference. It's not gonna make it look like dolphin or whatever, but on my HDTV it looks better than component on wii. Personally I think this Is great. As someone whose wii backlog is quite huge this will be a preferable way to play them IMO.

Played some Sonic Colors cuz...

A.) I'm a Sonic fan, and..

B.) There are tons of little details in the background of Tropical Resort.

You can see them a bit better now. Textures are a bit sharper as it doesn't have that 480P HDTV fuzz to it.

MOAR:

I just tested quite a few games on the Wii-U and Tatsunoko Vs. Capsom benefits the most from the upscaling, it looks really good compared to how it looks on the Wii. Other games I tried such as Brawl and NMH 2 looks much better as well. I actually want to play through NMH 2 again because its so much crisper, I can actually see the small things in Travis' room lol. Most of the games I tried did look better but some there was really no difference at all.

And...

....the TV is saying it's receiving a 720p signal. The Wii U is upscaling the Wii games to 720p and outputting that to the TV.

As others have said, the native resolution of the Wii games is the same. But having the Wii U upscale should result in a cleaner image for a lot of folks, as it will do a better job than many TV's crappy scalers.

And someone explained why doing the above on the original Wii sucked major ass:

The Wii has a notoriously bad video output chip - it was considerably worse than the GC

And someone there did try playing a Resident Evil game on the Wii U. Too bad it was the worse RE in terms of graphics to test this with:

RE4 was the first game a tried, it's definitely not as blurry but brings to light some new graphical oddities. The game is being zoomed already in 480p so I'm not surprised (The RE4 version the Wii version is based on, is the GameCube version - the one that had big black bars on top and below the screen. And it runs at 360p, which is why it looks blurry). Upscaled is still the better way to play it though.

Now, in regards to the Wii U, it presently has way too many issues. Nintendo needs to iron them out. Patch that sucker up and improve the OS.

I won't buy one until there is a game for it that I really, really want. ZombiU looks sweet (specially the whole survival aspect of it). And some of the other games look fun. But I just need a big game that would get me over the fence on this one. I haven't seen one yet.

[Beanovsky Durst]

Personally I'm waiting for Wii U XL/Slim/3D or whatever. Or a price drop. And a system exclusive Resident Evil title.

Wii U it's tempting, but I've learned my lesson with the 3DS (and with any modern console system and their redesigns and price drops).

[Vito]

Wii U it's tempting, but I've learned my lesson with the 3DS (and with any modern console system and their redesigns and price drops).

This x100. I'm really tempted by ZombiU but I'll wait, same with Vita.

[Joey3264]

my first impression of Nintendo Land it that it was going to be another lame Wii Sports but wow.. so addictive and fun to play with friends. this was a lot more fun than wii sports was. but anyways i have a very good feeling about this console, it looks like it will be a lot more interesting than the wii.
also, my ID is Joey3264 (neat! we finally have usernames)

[Code_R]

It sounds nice to be able to play the Wii games in upscaled versions but as the only pro point I can see, personally there is no reason to buy one. The release line up is just so vastly underwhelming compared to the exiting stuff I remember back when the N64 and Gamecube were new. I don't see any first party top tier games at all there, kinda depressing. Then again, so was the first Wii.

[Pikminister]

It sounds nice to be able to play the Wii games in upscaled versions but as the only pro point I can see, personally there is no reason to buy one. The release line up is just so vastly underwhelming compared to the exiting stuff I remember back when the N64 and Gamecube were new. I don't see any first party top tier games at all there, kinda depressing. Then again, so was the first Wii.

Aside from Super Mario 64, there was almost no reason to own a N64 when it launched. I remember having to choose between Pilotwings 64 and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. I got the Star Wars game because I thought it would be a good one... Boy, was I wrong.

On the Gamecube, things were better, but not all too different from what the Wii U has in its line up. The Cube came out with 12 games. And the only one I thought was worth owning (I still have it to this day) was Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader.

The Wii only needed Wii Sports when it launched (it had several games on it, including a CoD game). But like the Wii U, I didn't see at the time any game worth buying the console for. So again, I will wait until I see a game that I just can't be without.

I'm gonna wait until Nintendo gets things in order. The OS is buggy and slow at the moment. The system has more than enough RAM to deal with that. So its gonna happen. And where's Metroid Prime 4? And wasn't Pikmin 3 supposed to be a launch title?

Until then... I'll wait.

[Mr. Spencer]

Aside from Super Mario 64, there was almost no reason to own a N64 when it launched. I remember having to choose between Pilotwings 64 and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. I got the Star Wars game because I thought it would be a good one... Boy, was I wrong.

[Pikminister]

Aside from Super Mario 64, there was almost no reason to own a N64 when it launched.

So I repeat, there was nothing aside from Mario 64.... when it launched.

[Carnivol]

Pilotwings and Super Mario 64 were both launch titles in the US and EU.
Shadows of the Empire was also an EU launch title. Delicious one to boot.

'97 brought many great games. Bomberman 64 <3

[Pikminister]

Pilotwings and Super Mario 64 were both launch titles in the US and EU.

Yeah I mention them before here.

Shadows of the Empire was also an EU launch title. Delicious one to boot.

It wasn't very good, though. Lots of fog, slow movement and lots of empty areas. Plus the NES-like static cut-scenes didn't help. The Hoth level was good (where you would fly the Snowspeeders). It sold well mostly due to the brand name and being a launch game.

'97 brought many great games. Bomberman 64 <3

I remember playing it and not finding it very appealing or fun. Or maybe it was one of the other ones that came out. I don't remember.

EDIT: Wait, was that the one with the isometric view?

EDIT 2: LOL Just checked. I played Bomberman Hero and they all had an isometric point of view.

[Canas Renvall]

Yes, it was. Bomberman Hero was the third-person game.

Personally, I loved both.

But yeah, compared to the N64, the Wii U has a great launch. Yeah SM64 was a total reinvention of the platformer, but it doesn't change the fact that the N64 had a whopping two games at launch in America. Just on variety alone it wins out. Quality, as always however, is subjective. Personally, I love ZombiU and NSMBU, and I'm having quite a good time with Nintendo Land as well!

On top of that, I plan on getting 007 Legends and Assassin's Creed III for Christmas. This system already has great third party support if you ask me, and plenty more on the way.

- Gearbox vocally touting the Wii U version of Aliens: Colonial Marines as the best version (graphics, mechanics, etc.) and trying to boost it by releasing the Wii U version months ahead of the PS360 and PC.
- Platinum Games both with Nintendo buying up Bayonetta (which is now a Nintendo IP, they did indeed buy it) as well as The Wonderful 101.
- Tekken Tag Tournament 2 coming jam-packed with improved visuals and tons of Nintendo-themed costumes and more importantly, the return of Tekken Ball!
- Scribblenauts Unlimited basically the same as TTT2, stuffed with Nintendo-specific content that extends the game

And that's just at the launch period. People are getting pumped for the Wii U, and we're gonna benefit from it.