I’ve been back on Wii after picking up a Retrotink 4K and being gobsmacked by how authentic it looked via S-Video compared with my JVC PVM. Has the same super smooth, unfocused but high-res look that I remember.
Then I tried my component cables and was blown away by 480p properly scaled. Had only previously seen 480p on a 768p “HD Ready” Sony Bravia and I remember feeling disappointed by it back in 2007 when we upgraded from a consumer Phillips CRT.
So I went and finally played through Super Paper Mario and honestly, while this game certainly is uneven on paper, it’s far greater than the sum of its parts.
I’d even go as far as saying it was way ahead of its time for a game released in 2007, given how it integrates the fourth wall into its narrative. This was just before Portal hit and made that style of narrative more popular.
The debt chapter is cheeky but inventive, there’s a whole segment where Mario gets sent to literal hell, a chapter that holds up a mirror to hardcore gamers who expect games to serve them as products, the graphics design is authentic to digital art and even that’s used to represent an empty void in ways which just make sense. And one of the villains effectively playing you is a plot device that we’d only seen previously in Konami’s Shadow of Destiny.
Highly recommended - I can’t see Nintendo making a game like this again, given how tightly woven sales and marketing seem to be with the developers.
Doesn’t suit every game but there’s always the option to use 480i for games that would benefit from a softer image.
The built in black frame insertion also really helped plus the support for HDR makes it overcome any brightness issues typical with CRT emulation. It’s nice to have CRT-like image quality on a flat panel for once…
I’ll have a look when I’m back, but I think it was one of the preloaded Wii presets, but with BFI turned on. Seems to look great when I tested S-Video and 480i, and component and 480p.
For 240p gaming I use one of two preloaded JVC consumer or PVM CRT presets.
I’m using the profile that was already saved to the Nintendo Wii profiles folder:
Fox_83 Nintendo Wii YPbPr => Nintendo Wii A Grille Dense Mono
but with BFI turned on and 1440p120 in the settings (my OLED monitor only does 1440p!)
Yeah, I’m really happy that the Retrotink 4K actually renders native 1440p with its filters rather than downsampling from 4K, looks so much better that way with detailed filters. It is making me want to sell my monitor and get a 4K for the extra detail though…
I played Beltrunner on my Wii yesterday. I couldn’t see the icon in Homebrew Channel but I was able to load it through YAWM. Fun game. It looks like I need a different strategy or more practice to get better scores.
I was also playing through Super Paper Mario over the past year but I haven’t finished it yet. I had a break of a few months so I need to get back into it. Last time I played I was in hell chapter. There’s a lot to like in the game (wiimote pointing controlls, humour, characters, art, etc.) but it is a bit long of a game. It has a lot of experimentation but it is lacking some polish. I really liked the chapter with chameleon boss.
