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Could Super Mario Sunshine run on the Wii like Galaxy?

Superking

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,650
Okay we all know that Super Mario Galaxy looks way better than Sunshine. But in Sunshine's defense, it had much larger area to render than the average Galaxy level, and possibly more complex water effects than Galaxy had. So because of that, the GameCube may not have had enough horsepower to accomplish 60 FPS with widescreen.

But what about the wii? Did we have enough power to do it? And while we're at it, could Sunshine on the Wii also have achieved the significantly improved texture work and lighting effects of Galaxy as well? Or is that too much of a tall order?
 
TeenageFBI

TeenageFBI

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,299
Sunshine was running at 60 FPS on the GameCube shortly before release* so I'm pretty sure the Wii could have handled it.

*Presumably Nintendo cut the framerate to 30 for the final release because the GC couldn't hold a solid 60 for the whole game.
 
ghibli99

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,951
The CPU was the same but overclocked, and I don't know how much more powerful the GPU was, but I seem to recall Sunshine running at 60fps in earlier versions on GC. Or did I imagine that? If it's true, pretty sure the Wii would have gotten it to 480p60.

Edit: TeenageFBI Perhaps I didn't imagine it. LOL
 
RayCharlizard

RayCharlizard

Member
Nov 2, 2017
3,020
You can already do this with Nintendont homebrew on a hacked Wii.

Edit: Well, minus graphical improvements of course but you can run Sunshine at 60 fps and 16:9 on a Wii. The other questions could be theorized if there's some sort of performance profiling that could be enabled on a hacked Wii to see GPU and CPU utilization. If there's a decent amount of GPU headroom, then sure, you could maybe bump up lighting features a bit. Textures could be improved just due to the increase in available memory.
 
Garou

Garou

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,641
The Wii...can play GameCube games...

main-qimg-02da873788126dc84ecd3ded6ea13671-lq
 
ghibli99

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,951
ThereAreFourNaan said:
They're wondering if the Wii could do Super Mario Sunshine at 60fps in widescreen with graphical improvements (so it looks closer to Galaxy's graphics), or whether the game is too "big" for that. Sunshine runs at 30 on GC.
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Yeah, I don't know why some folks aren't understanding this... unless they're literally only reading the thread title.
 
Mekanos

Mekanos

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 17, 2018
44,311
ghibli99 said:
Yeah, I don't know why some folks aren't understanding this... unless they're literally only reading the thread title.
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I read the post, it just felt like it was still not really clear what was being precisely asked - I wasn't sure if it was specifically asking if it was about the 60 FPS and widescreen or a broader "like Galaxy" statement. (Also, I don't think the first Mario Galaxy had a normal widescreen option, but I might be wrong.)
 
ThereAreFourNaan

ThereAreFourNaan

Member
Nov 8, 2017
13,187
My answer to the question in general:

The Wii has an extra chunk of RAM (64MB extra, but not of the exact same type and configuration, it's complicated), a CPU clocked about 1.5x higher, and a GPU clocked 1.5x higher.

The Wii is not capable of doubling the performance of every game that ran on GC. However, depending on how much spare performance a game had on GC, the Wii would be able to target 60fps in some games that were capped at 30 on GC. The extra memory means that levels can be larger with better assets, both from a capacity perspective and in the sense that the extra memory should help with streaming in assets as you traverse things.

Mario Sunshine came out in 2002, and by the time of Galaxy 5 years later, the teams at Nintendo assuredly had improved their tools and developed better algorithms and best practices for development. So it's also believable that early GC stuff could be improved a decent amount by the time the Wii was on shelves, independent of the hardware improvements.

Widescreen on the Wii is not rendering more pixels btw, although some may choose to increase FoV which can have some impact on performance. It's anamorphic widescreen, rendering at the same 640x480 as non-widescreen games, but then the pixels are stretched to fill the 16:9 screen.
 
ghibli99

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,951
Mekanos said:
I read the post, it just felt like it was still not really clear what was being precisely asked - I wasn't sure if it was specifically asking if it was about the 60 FPS and widescreen or a broader "like Galaxy" statement. (Also, I don't think the first Mario Galaxy had a normal widescreen option, but I might be wrong.)
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It's all good. And perhaps I was a little too harsh... but some responses felt like they didn't even see the '60fps widescreen' part. :)
 
Lant_War

Lant_War

Classic Anus Game
Banned
Jul 14, 2018
23,601
I played it on my Wii with the 60FPS patch and it held to 60FPS very well on almost every area except the amusement park where it had some noticeable slowdown. I don't actually know if Wii BC through Nintendon't actually uses any of the additional power of the Wii though so maybe that's how it'd run in GC too.
 
OP
OP

Superking

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,650
ThereAreFourNaan said:
Widescreen on the Wii is not rendering more pixels btw, although some may choose to increase FoV which can have some impact on performance. It's anamorphic widescreen, rendering at the same 640x480 as non-widescreen games, but then the pixels are stretched to fill the 16:9 screen.
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wait...sorry if i'm misinterpreting this, but are you saying widescreen wii games aren't true widescreen?
 
ThereAreFourNaan

ThereAreFourNaan

Member
Nov 8, 2017
13,187
Superking said:
wait...sorry if i'm misinterpreting this, but are you saying widescreen wii games aren't true widescreen?
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In the sense that it's not rendering 854x480, yes. It's rendering 640x480 in both cases, but when the Wii is set to widescreen output, the image is sort of distorted in such a way that it looks normal when you stretch it to a 16:9 frame. You can see what I mean by distorted by setting the Wii output to 16:9, but then forcing the TV into a 4:3 aspect ratio. I googled anamorphic picture and you can see the same type of distortion in this example image. The woman in the portrait looks like they're stretched to be too tall.

Please note that anamorphism isn't that unusual - DVDs would do a similar sort of thing. Even some games on other consoles occasionally did this - Metal Gear Solid 4 renders at 1024x768, which is a 4:3 aspect ratio, then the image is stretched to a 16:9 final image by the scaler chip.
 
ghibli99

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,951
Funny to think back on anamorphic widescreen content and how 4:3 TVs at the time (like Sony WEGAs) would allow you to "squish" the image down vertically to 1.85:1 (roughly 16:9). I used to prioritize buying anamorphic widescreen DVDs and used to complain like a spoiled child when they weren't. LOL

And also a little depressing realizing that there are quite a few folks here who likely weren't even born or remember that being a thing...
 
OP
OP

Superking

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,650
Slick Butter said:
yeah i'm fairly certain they all just use rectangular pixels for 16:9 mode. the games just get rendered squished instead so they look normal when stretched to 16:9
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ThereAreFourNaan said:
In the sense that it's not rendering 854x480, yes. It's rendering 640x480 in both cases, but when the Wii is set to widescreen output, the image is sort of distorted in such a way that it looks normal when you stretch it to a 16:9 frame. You can see what I mean by distorted by setting the Wii output to 16:9, but then forcing the TV into a 4:3 aspect ratio. I googled anamorphic picture and you can see the same type of distortion in this example image. The woman in the portrait looks like they're stretched to be too tall.

Please note that anamorphism isn't that unusual - DVDs would do a similar sort of thing. Even some games on other consoles occasionally did this - Metal Gear Solid 4 renders at 1024x768, which is a 4:3 aspect ratio, then the image is stretched to a 16:9 final image by the scaler chip.
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so i....think i understand what you guys are saying. if you have smg appearr in 4:3 on a tv, then it will appear squished like in the picture. but if you change the settings to 16:9 it'll appear like it should normally?
 
ThereAreFourNaan

ThereAreFourNaan

Member
Nov 8, 2017
13,187
Superking said:
so i....think i understand what you guys are saying. if you have smg appearr in 4:3 on a tv, then it will appear squished like in the picture. but if you change the settings to 16:9 it'll appear like it should normally?
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Sorry if it's confusing, but in summary - the Wii always renders a 4:3 640x480 resolution image no matter what settings you do, but if you tell the Wii to output in 16:9, it makes that 4:3 image squishy, so that when it fills a widescreen TV, it looks perceptually normal.

So you never normally notice the squishing unless you've got your TV settings mismatched to Wii settings. But the performance implications are basically 0, so the widescreen doesn't cost the developers any rendering resources because of this trick. It also means picture quality is a bit worse than it would be if you instead rendered out a full 854x480 widescreen image to display instead.

Random extra note - the GC also could do widescreen, but it was not widely supported like it was on Wii. There are maybe 25 or 30 total GC titles that could do it.
 
Shadow

Shadow

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,158
Superking said:
so i....think i understand what you guys are saying. if you have smg appearr in 4:3 on a tv, then it will appear squished like in the picture. but if you change the settings to 16:9 it'll appear like it should normally?
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If you change it to 16:9 on a 4:3 display, it will appear squished. If you change it to 4:3 on a 16:9 display it will appear stretched. The thing here though is the resolution is not changed and it's just the squished picture 4:3, stretched, on a 16:9 display.

edit: I'm getting mixed up myself lmao. It won't appear stretched on a 16:9 if it's anamorphic widescreen.
 
OP
OP

Superking

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,650
ThereAreFourNaan said:
Sorry if it's confusing, but in summary - the Wii always renders a 4:3 640x480 resolution image no matter what settings you do, but if you tell the Wii to output in 16:9, it makes that 4:3 image squishy, so that when it fills a widescreen TV, it looks perceptually normal.

So you never normally notice the squishing unless you've got your TV settings mismatched to Wii settings. But the performance implications are basically 0, so the widescreen doesn't cost the developers any rendering resources because of this trick. It also means picture quality is a bit worse than it would be if you instead rendered out a full 854x480 widescreen image to display instead.

Random extra note - the GC also could do widescreen, but it was not widely supported like it was on Wii. There are maybe 25 or 30 total GC titles that could do it.
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Shadow said:
If you change it to 16:9 on a 4:3 display, it will appear squished. If you change it to 4:3 on a 16:9 display it will appear stretched. The thing here though is the resolution is not changed and it's just the squished picture 4:3, stretched, on a 16:9 display.

edit: I'm getting mixed up myself lmao. It won't appear stretched on a 16:9 if it's anamorphic widescreen.
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okay i think this may help

so when i first played smg way back when, i did so on a CRT TV, so it's 4:3 by default. i then set the wii settings to match the TV, so both are 4:3. as a result, the display has the game appearing in widescreen, but it has mattes on top and bottom of the screen.

so then if i play the game on an HDTV, and set the wii settings to 16:9, the display will take up the entire screen with no mattes, and appear correctly.

do i have it right?
 
A More Normal Bird

A More Normal Bird

Member
Nov 14, 2017
2,337
Superking said:
okay i think this may help

so when i first played smg way back when, i did so on a CRT TV, so it's 4:3 by default. i then set the wii settings to match the TV, so both are 4:3. as a result, the display has the game appearing in widescreen, but it has mattes on top and bottom of the screen.

so then if i play the game on an HDTV, and set the wii settings to 16:9, the display will take up the entire screen with no mattes, and appear correctly.

do i have it right?
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No. If it's set to 4:3 on a 4:3 screen it'll just be 4:3. It's only if the output is set to wide-screen that it will adjust the 640x480 (4:3) image so that when it's anamorphically scaled it will appear normal on a 16:9 screen. A normal 4:3 image would look horizontally stretched if scaled to fill 16:9, and the anamorphic 4:3 image (designed to look normal when stretched to 16:9) will be fullscreen but look horizontally squished when viewed in 4:3.
 
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