New Super Paper Mario Wii screens (in our favorite ratio)

My God... what have I started? I just told off a troll, made a witty comment and all of this happened. Well, yah, it is the internet, so I guess I should expect as much.

Anyway, to clarify about my PSP comment, I was just using Gavin's logic in saying why can't we have a current game on an older, less powerful system at a lower cost? I mean it IS possible to have Resistance on the PSP, what with it having cutting edge graphics and whatnot. Of course, you'll probably have to cut out 50% of the game itself just to get it on a UMD, but what do we gamers know.

In all honesty I LIKE high end graphics. I OWN a fairly new computer and love Company of Heroes and Medieval 2, games which pushed the envelope when they came out. But... at the same time I like more stylish, somewhat less graphicly intense games like Metal Slug or Paper Mario. They make the artist inside me chuckle at the good execution of style.

So I'm saying it again, I am psyched for this game, although I wonder how will they impliment the Wiimote here, if at all. Not all games needs to waggle to be good you know.
/ramble

@VanGuardian1,

I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii hardware could be pushed to at least twice the level of the GC, like the poster suggests. What a lot of people don't understand is that the actual architecture of the hardware matters just as much as the specs of the system. The design of the Wii chips should allow output beyond that of the XBOX, even though spec levels are roughly equal with the XBOX.

Since for the most part we are seeing high-end GC graphics AT BEST on the Wii, I would expect we'll see an increase in graphically quality over the next year or two. Because it is similar to the GC and doesn't jump TOO high, the Wii will probably reach its visual peak much earlier than most consoles.

Based on what I've read and seen, the Wii should be able to handle something on the level of Kameo running in 480p.

@ VanGuardian 1

that was an excellent link, thanks

Says what i presumed all along (although in MUCH more technical terms) Wii is GC 1.5 in terms of clock speed, but the smoother, PowerPC architecture allows it to vastly outstrip the Xbox, and it has a little more than double the GC's RAM, and the graphics card has many of the features that the other consoles tout (except anti-aliasing, for some reason)

Attention Wii apologists: I am not a troll, nor is what I did here trolling. I was just honestly speaking my mind as someone who has been a video game fan since I first got an Atari 2600 back in the late 70's. You people have been suckered into the Wii hype and overpaying for games? Good for you...keep drinking that koolaid. I'll save my money for something more worthwhile.

Fair enough Gavin,it is your opinion and I'm not stopping you from having it, just try not to come off as an jerk while you say it. There are better ways of expressing critisism for a console than that. I mean look at the flame war we started here. Besides there are worse people that come here regularly, namely that JJC guy.

"47. Interesting that every Nintendo fanboy apologist always says this party-line bullshit. When the 64 came out it was the opposite. Every Nintendo fanboy back then had nothing but praise for the leap in graphical capability of that system over the Super NES."

That's because back then improved graphics mattered a lot more than they do now. The N64 allowed for a jump into three dimensions, opening up virtually infinite new gameplay possibilities. At this point, on the other hand, more processing power means character models with a few more polygons or the ability to put a couple more enemies onscreen at once.

Graphics do affect gameplay, but their effects become less and less noticeable with each passing generation.

Wasn't the 2D/3D mechanic of this game announced months ago? And then didn't Crush get announced a couple weeks ago? Sounds suspicious.

Anyway the core gameplay mechanic is very original, so the game is original. You can't call it "just another Mario game." I'd rather have a million different games starring Mario than a million copies of the same game starring a different "space marine." Yeah I'm looking at you every FPS ever.

The Wii massively violates Moore's Law. Adjusted for modern technology, the Wii is about 6-8 times less powerful than GameCube was at the time of its launch. That does not bode well for the most expensive home console Nintendo has ever released.

Why you people think this is terrific is beyond me. Comparing the Wii to the 360 isn't fair given the price delta, but it SHOULD be directly compared to its predecessor released more than 5 years earlier. It's in the same price bracket for the motherboard, memory, CPU, and GPU.

If the Wii was about half to a third the performance of the 360, I'd be impressed (and, yes, Nintendo could still make a profit on hardware if they did that).

@VanGuardian1: That forum post was written by a guy who knows nothing about programming. I especially like how he said that the 360 doesn't have a texture cache.

"3Mb on-board NEC eDRAM for frame buffer & texture cache"

Just to keep up with GameCube, it should have 32MB. For an extra $50, a 360 gives you 512MB of memory with 10MB of graphics cache which handles *all* the stuff that would normally clog all the GPU's bandwidth, not just textures.

"This will provide a huge pixel fill-rate of 1.944 Gigapixels/second (core clock frequency (MHz) x Texture Units = Fill-rate)."

Yeah, but you forgot to tell us how many texture units there are, and how the microcode differs. Exactly 1.944 GPx/s? How do you figure? I see the MHz Myth is still alive and well.

"The TEV is fully programmable (not limited like DX7 GPUs)"

Yeah, the Amiga's copper is also "fully programmable" -- with a whopping 3 instructions. What does fully programmable mean? Basicly, more than not being programmable at all. What do "DX7 limits" mean? Nothing. Consoles don't follow PC standards, either. Assuming the XBox is limited to DX7 standards only is completely wrong by default.

"Even if we assume the CPU is just 1.5x as powerful as the Gamecube's, it can out-run the Xbox's CPU twice over. With the new architecture, we may assume that the Broadway is in the region of 250% the speed of Xbox's Celeron 733 32-bit CPU."

No, you may not assume. You're comparing an inflexible, hard-cored RISC chip to a CISC chip with microcode running on a RISC core. Clock speeds, overhead, cache, instruction order... all that gets tossed out the window. A Core Solo processor is roughly 3 times faster than a Pentium4 Northwood at the same clock speed, running the same code, and the Northwood was actually a good core compared to the later Prescott (which got its butt kicked by AMD).

Numbers mean nothing these days. Real world results are what matter. When I see a $250 Wii running GameCube-like games at 30FPS with blurry textures and without anti-aliasing, that's all I need to see to know the architecture sucks. Oh yeah, and I still haven't gotten my extra controllers, yet. Of course the Wiimote is so good and revolutionary that I have to buy alternatives.

Fanboys like it because they have to. They always bragged about graphics on previous systems, and Nintendo always made money on hardware. Only once Nintendo isn't competitive anymore is when graphics no longer matter.

VanGuardian,

Just a little bit of verifiable information...

Processor Speed
XBOX 733 Mhz
Wii 729 Mhz
360 3.2 Ghz x 3

System Memory
XBOX 64 MB
Wii 64 MB
360 512 MB

Video Card Speed
XBOX 233 Mhz
Wii 243 Mhz
360 500 Mhz

Video Card Polygons
XBOX 116.5 Million
Wii 145 Million ~ Maybe
360 500 Million

Video Card Fill Rate
XBOX 1.82 Gtexels/sec
Wii 1.89 Gtexels/sec
360 16 Gtexels/sec

In some ways, the Wii is slightly more powerful than the original XBox and in others it's not. While the GameCube was considerably less powerful than the original XBox the Wii is somewhere on par with the original XBox. Certainly not cutting edge technology. So, fundamentally, at best the Wii should be capable of getting close to what the original XBox was able to do. The original XBox also had several 720p and 1080i games in their library.

If the story is true (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37694) then why doesn't the Wii offer HD? Framerates appear to be the explanation, but if the Wii is as capable as the unverifiable post you've liked to is true then there's something wrong with the architecture that causes low framerates.

"110. The Wii massively violates Moore's Law. Adjusted for modern technology, the Wii is about 6-8 times less powerful than GameCube was at the time of its launch. That does not bode well for the most expensive home console Nintendo has ever released."

If you're going to "adjust for modern technology", you should also adjust the price.

http://curmudgeongamer.com/imgdisplay.php3?shotfile=console-prices-relative.png

Taking inflation into account, the Gamecube was $226, the N64 was $255, the SNES was $293, and the NES was a whopping $365.

Additionally, please understand that a console being less powerful, which you claim "does not bode well" for the Wii, is historically unimportant from a console sales standpoint.

Things like this comments page are why I don't read game blogs. You're all fucking retarded.