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Power of Wii hardware versus Gamecube hardware

L

lazygecko

Member
So we've had threads about comparing the differences between the NES and Game Boy, and the NES versus the Master System and both of these had some pretty enlightening and interesting details. Something else I've always been curious about is how the Wii really compares to its predecessor: the Gamecube.

I've read plenty of conflicting statements over the years, both saying that it was a souped up Gamecube and that it was a stripped down one. Perhaps both are true in certain aspects. What I am pretty sure of however is that the capabilities of the Wii was misrepresented for most of its library. Multiplatform developers at the time had a very dismissive attitude towards the system and titles would often be created or ported over by understaffed teams sometimes even using PS2 devkits (think I read this from an Activision developer), with the end result being many titles actually looking worse than what you'd normally see on the Gamecube years before.

So what were the advantages/drawbacks of Wii development compared to Gamecube development?
 
1

10k

Banned
It was basically a gamecube with twice the ram and twice the clock speeds on the cpu and memory. It added in motion controls and some flash memory. The joke "two Gamecubes duct taped together" wasn't actually far off.
 
M

MarcoZombieCannon

Member
Uh... I don't think there's any part of the Wii that is technically slower or worse than the Gamecube, I mean unless you wanna count the video output.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Wasn't there some issue with certain graphical effects that couldn't be displayed for the Metroid Prime ports in Metroid Prime Trilogy?
 
T

ThaGuy

Member
Xenoblade showed that most consoles are never fully tapped into. Is Xenoblade bigger than destiny or vice versa? Im curious.

Edit: Holy crap, Im a member!
 
A

akidnamededdy

Banned
lazygecko said:
Wasn't there some issue with certain graphical effects that couldn't be displayed for the Metroid Prime ports in Metroid Prime Trilogy?
Click to expand...

Ehhh I know that they took out Samus's visible skeleton arm when using the x-ray visor but that was on account of sometging to do with the new aiming system making it hard to reuse those assets and not so much a hardware limitation. That's all I remember though.
 
A

AmFreak

Member
10k said:
It was basically a gamecube with twice the ram and twice the clock speeds on the cpu and memory. It added in motion controls and some flash memory. The joke "two Gamecubes duct taped together" wasn't actually far off.
Click to expand...

Close - the clock was 1.5x the gc one. The memory is a little more complicated, but ~2x the amount, if you count the awfully slow ARAM of the gc.
 
K

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
akidnamededdy said:
Ehhh I know that they took out Samus's visible skeleton arm when using the x-ray visor but that was on account of sometging to do with the new aiming system making it hard to reuse those assets and not so much a hardware limitation. That's all I remember though.
Click to expand...

That's correct, it was an issue of old animations for elemental effects not meshing with the way the arm canon can bend around in Prime Trilogy.

By comparison the Trilogy versions of the first two games have new effects, like bloom, and I believe higher quality textures (just by a bit.)

Wii is definitely more powerful than Gamecube in every way. I vaguely recall that prototype versions of Mario Sunshine ran at 60fps, but hey had to cap it at 30fps because the Gamecube couldn't handle every area at that framerate. By comparison Mario Galaxy easily cruised at 60fps, with more advanced effects and lighting.
 
Z

Zeyphersan

Banned
lazygecko said:
Wasn't there some issue with certain graphical effects that couldn't be displayed for the Metroid Prime ports in Metroid Prime Trilogy?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought there was some shiny effect the Gamecube could do that nothing else was able to? I remember reading about that a lot when it comes to comparing Resident Evil 4 to its later ports.
 
Shpeshal Nick

Shpeshal Nick

aka Collingwood
They're almost identical for all intents and purposes. At least as far as I knew. I think the Wii had a bump here and there.
 
M

Madao

Member
to this day i can't believe there's people who seriously thought the Wii was weaker than the Gamecube. did they miss the fact the Wii had perfect GC BC?
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Kai Dracon said:
By comparison the Trilogy versions of the first two games have new effects, like bloom, and I believe higher quality textures (just by a bit.)
Click to expand...

Did Samus' suit recieve a texture update as well? The pixelly/blurry low res texture around the torso/midsection always stuck out like a sore thumb to me, even back in the day.
 
S

Shiggy

Member
Madao said:
to this day i can't believe there's people who seriously thought the Wii was weaker than the Gamecube. did they miss the fact the Wii had perfect GC BC?
Click to expand...

Well, actually the Wii was weaker than GameCube. Try this out: Jump thrice on your GameCube - it should hold and work well afterwards. The Wii won't.

Not sure about the Wii Mini though. That looks pretty strong.


Edit: Yeah, I think the GameCube is stronger than the Wii:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwUYpOnBP-M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWYHw_3dE7I
 
O

orthodoxy1095

Banned
ThaGuy said:
Xenoblade showed that most consoles are never fully tapped into. Is Xenoblade bigger than destiny or vice versa? Im curious.

Edit: Holy crap, Im a member!
Click to expand...
Bigger, yes. I'm nearly positive about that. But even considering my distaste for much of Destiny, it is a bit of a silly comparison since they're trying to be different things.
 
M

Madao

Member
lazygecko said:
Wasn't there some issue with certain graphical effects that couldn't be displayed for the Metroid Prime ports in Metroid Prime Trilogy?
Click to expand...

the only effect that was removed without explanation was the water rippling in mp1.

the arm cannon effects were removed because those needed some reprogramming to work right and this was a very cheap port so there was no money or time for that (16:9 was achieved by cropping the play area, not rendering more. that shows how cheap it was)

also, only mp1 had missing effects. mp2 has every effect from GC intact + the added bloom on wii.
 
R

RagingAvatar

Member
If you want to get technical about graphics the Wii had 50% more of the fixed function shader units (TEVs) that the GC had. There was no graphical effect the GC could do that the Wii couldn't.
 
J

jon bones

hot hot hanuman-on-man action
ThaGuy said:
Xenoblade showed that most consoles are never fully tapped into. Is Xenoblade bigger than destiny or vice versa? Im curious.

Edit: Holy crap, Im a member!
Click to expand...

what? kind of a silly comparison considering how different the games are
 
P

Peltz

Member
lazygecko said:
Wasn't there some issue with certain graphical effects that couldn't be displayed for the Metroid Prime ports in Metroid Prime Trilogy?
Click to expand...

The Wii versions of the first two games allowed the player to aim the arm cannon in directions not previously possible in the GCN version. On GCN, there were a couple of graphical effects on the arm cannon that were basically just like animated .gifs overlaid onto the arm cannon which looked good because the cannon never actually moved from the default position. But they weren't true particle effects or polygons, and were merely 2D sprite-based assets.

Thus, when porting the game to Wii for pointer-controls, the illusion of these effects were broken once the arm cannon was able to move around and be aimed in a 3D space in the Wii version... and the player was able to see the arm canon realistically move about as they moved the aiming reticule around the screen. So the devs scrapped the sprite-based effects rather than remake them/replace them with polygons/particles.
 
K

KyleCross

Member
Madao said:
the only effect that was removed without explanation was the water rippling in mp1.

the arm cannon effects were removed because those needed some reprogramming to work right and this was a very cheap port so there was no money or time for that (16:9 was achieved by cropping the play area, not rendering more. that shows how cheap it was)

also, only mp1 had missing effects. mp2 has every effect from GC intact + the added bloom on wii.
Click to expand...
Aw man, it's cropped? I haven't played the games yet and planned to with Trilogy. Would I be better off snagging the Gamecube releases and emulating them in Dolphin with widescreen hack?
 
T

ThaGuy

Member
orthodoxy1095 said:
Bigger, yes. I'm nearly positive about that. But even considering my distaste for much of Destiny, it is a bit of a silly comparison since they're trying to be different things.
Click to expand...

The comparison is a bit off I admit, but I'm just saying that most consoles are never fully tapped into. I remember Factor 5(Rip) said the wii can do so much more than people can imagine.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
lazygecko said:
Wasn't there some issue with certain graphical effects that couldn't be displayed for the Metroid Prime ports in Metroid Prime Trilogy?
Click to expand...

this was a fault of the motion controls. The effects in Metroid Prime were actually 2D images overlayed on top of the screen expecting the arm cannon to be in a certain spot so it looked right. Because of the motion controls of the wii version, this meant the arm cannon could freely move around, which broke the effect.
 
F

flohen95

Member
Akronis said:
The Wii Mini looks like a god damn McDonalds Happy Meal toy.
Click to expand...

I think the design is inspired by one of those dual screen game and watches. It certainly looks similar.

Dunno, I kinda like it. Feels very "classic" to me, even though I can't deny that it looks cheap.
 
F

frankie_baby

Member
ThaGuy said:
The comparison is a bit off I admit, but I'm just saying that most consoles are never fully tapped into. I remember Factor 5(Rip) said the wii can do so much more than people can imagine.
Click to expand...

It's a crime we never saw what they managed to do with the system
 
S

Shiggy

Member
Krejlooc said:
this was a fault of the motion controls. The effects in Metroid Prime were actually 2D images overlayed on top of the screen expecting the arm cannon to be in a certain spot so it looked right. Because of the motion controls of the wii version, this meant the arm cannon could freely move around, which broke the effect.
Click to expand...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGjgfSwOPw0

The water effect was missing for some reason (which is unrelated to the power of the console though).
 
P

Peltz

Member
Madao said:
the only effect that was removed without explanation was the water rippling in mp1.

the arm cannon effects were removed because those needed some reprogramming to work right and this was a very cheap port so there was no money or time for that (16:9 was achieved by cropping the play area, not rendering more. that shows how cheap it was)

also, only mp1 had missing effects. mp2 has every effect from GC intact + the added bloom on wii.
Click to expand...

Actually, the game was proper 16:9. There was no cropping of the top and bottom.
 
M

Madao

Member
KyleCross said:
Aw man, it's cropped? I haven't played the games yet and planned to with Trilogy. Would I be better off snagging the Gamecube releases and emulating them in Dolphin with widescreen hack?
Click to expand...

if you've got a powerful enough PC to run dolphin pretty good, that'd be the best way.
also, it depends on which controller you prefer since trilogy only allows the wii controls.
another minor thing to consider is speedrunning since the original releases have much more speed tricks but this one only affects very few people.
 
I

ilCuore

Member
lazygecko said:
Wasn't there some issue with certain graphical effects that couldn't be displayed for the Metroid Prime ports in Metroid Prime Trilogy?
Click to expand...



You can play the original Gamecube's Metroid Prime on Wii. (With all the effects).

Also the Trilogy version, which is, btw, much better in multiple aspects.
 
R

Rich!

Member
Speaking of MPT, I'm playing through Metroid Prime 2 right now on Hypermode difficulty. Awww yeeeaaah.
 
T

ThaGuy

Member
frankie_baby said:
It's a crime we never saw what they managed to do with the system
Click to expand...

It really is. It's a shame last gen took out so many companies that we actually liked. In what world does a company/publisher not want to greenlight a new timesplitters smh.

Back on topic, the gamecube was when Nintendo still believed in pushing the technical envelope in their consoles. The gamecube held it's own against a console (xbox) that was basically designed to be a computer. And even the xbox was never tapped into by far. It just wasn't profitable.
 
J

jackal27

Banned
Excited to see those Metroid Prime widescreen comparisons. Personally, I played a ton of both consoles and most Wii games seemed a lot more powerful than the Gamecube. Way more stuff ran at 60fps and some games had some really neat lighting effects and such. I don't know much on the technical side, but there were several Wii games that I found pretty impressive.
 
R

rekameohs

Banned
Wow, there's a lot of misinformation about Metroid Prime: Trilogy being thrown around in the thread. Obviously, the Wii is more powerful than the GameCube.

Metroid Prime (the original) featured smoke emitting from the arm cannon when firing a lot of power beam shots in a row. In addition, other effects, such as the arm cannon freezing over when charging the ice beam, and burning when charging the plasma beam were present. These features were removed in Trilogy because in the GameCube game, these are simply 2D images layered onto the screen, which was fine since the arm cannon always appeared in the same spot on the screen. Obviously, that wouldn't work with the arm cannon moving around on the Wii. For Prime 2 and 3, the effects on the arm cannon were finally modeled as full particle effects on the cannon itself, so moving the Wii Remote around works just fine. They didn't fix it for Prime 1, because let's be honest, why do the effort?

And for this widescreen cropping during gameplay - I don't know where that's coming from. The gameplay is very much 16:9. However, the cutscenes are cropped: since the original cutscenes were in 4:3, the new cutscenes had three options - zooming in slightly while keeping it 16:9, putting black bars on the sides of cutscenes, or remaking every single cutscene. They chose the first option.
 
A

Alo81

Low Poly Gynecologist
Zeyphersan said:
Yeah, I thought there was some shiny effect the Gamecube could do that nothing else was able to? I remember reading about that a lot when it comes to comparing Resident Evil 4 to its later ports.
Click to expand...

This might speak the why the effect wasn't present in the HD ports.

In the Ultimate HD Edition that was released on PC recently, the specular maps you're talking about didn't appear appropriately in game. As a result, there were no "shiny" textures.

A modder took the specular texture, rotated it 90 degrees, and suddenly everything worked as intended.

So it could be that the GC had specific capabilities the others didn't, or it could simply be that there was some human error upon porting the game over which caused the specular maps to get rotated and thus not display.

Currently, the Steam version of the game has this specular issue fixed due to the above finding.
 
J

jackal27

Banned
rekameohs said:
Wow, there's a lot of misinformation about Metroid Prime: Trilogy being thrown around in the thread. Obviously, the Wii is more powerful than the GameCube.

Metroid Prime (the original) featured smoke emitting from the arm cannon when firing a lot of power beam shots in a row. In addition, other effects, such as the arm cannon freezing over when charging the ice beam, and burning when charging the plasma beam were present. These features were removed in Trilogy because in the GameCube game, these are simply 2D images layered onto the screen, which was fine since the arm cannon always appeared in the same spot on the screen. Obviously, that wouldn't work with the arm cannon moving around on the Wii. For Prime 2 and 3, the effects on the arm cannon were finally modeled as full particle effects on the cannon itself, so moving the Wii Remote around works just fine. They didn't fix it for Prime 1, because let's be honest, why do the effort?

And for this widescreen cropping during gameplay - I don't know where that's coming from. The gameplay is very much 16:9. However, the cutscenes are cropped: since the original cutscenes were in 4:3, the new cutscenes had three options - zooming in slightly while keeping it 16:9, putting black bars on the sides of cutscenes, or remaking every single cutscene. They chose the first option.
Click to expand...

Woah. I never knew they removed those effects from Metroid Prime 1! Those were some of my favorite little touches in that game... Really wish they would have found a way to keep them. It's the little stuff like that that makes Metroid Prime what it is.
 
R

rjc571

Banned
I could've sworn I've seen MP Trilogy vs GC comparison shots before in which the Trilogy had a larger viewing area in 16:9.
 
R

Rich!

Member
Madao said:
the only effect that was removed without explanation was the water rippling in mp1.

the arm cannon effects were removed because those needed some reprogramming to work right and this was a very cheap port so there was no money or time for that (16:9 was achieved by cropping the play area, not rendering more. that shows how cheap it was)

also, only mp1 had missing effects. mp2 has every effect from GC intact + the added bloom on wii.
Click to expand...

That's not true. Just taken two screenshots for proof, one from MP GC and one from MPT.

iJ4zS3jqsTTUG.png
Click to expand...

iWLcwXma8IvJX.JPG
Click to expand...

I was mistaken - that's not cropped. That's true 16:9.
 
P

Pancakes R Us

Member
I know the Wii is a little more powerful than GC, but to be honest, I didn't see play many games on Wii that looked better than Starfox Adventures...and that was from 2002.
 
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