21st September 2012, 4:33 AM
All Wii games are developed for wide screen, every last one from Wii Sports to Smash Bros. Brawl to The Last Story to Madden 2012 to let's say "Rango" the game. This is also true of the main Wii OS, but again as I said, strangely not true for virtual console games, which all get stretched out unless you specifically force the TV into the right ratio. This is also an oddity of the 3DS, which "stretches out" DS games into a resolution that isn't a multiple of the DS resolution so there's serious artifacting instead of making the default action to shrink the games to their proper scale. The PSVita doesn't even give you a button code to play PSP games in the right ratio or resolution though, ALL PSP games will ALL have serious artifacting when played on that gorgeous screen. I think it's a mandate by Nintendo, which I'm fine with as having to deal with odd borders or having to switch TV modes on the occasional modern console game would be a little annoying. MS and Sony similarly require all 360 and PS3 games to be built around wide screen (more specifically in those two cases, at least 720). 4:3 modes are an afterthought. I thought I'd add one thing. While all the included retro games in the Kirby collection are displayed as they were originally released in 4:3 mode, the main interface itself (and by extension the added Return to Dreamland challenges) has two borders along the top and bottom to sort of squeeze that all in, which I know is annoying on an older display.
They're all built primarily with wide screen in mind, so I'd seriously consider picking up an HDTV set at some point when you can afford it since the Wii U will actually be an HD system (and as a result, if you don't have one, get ready to deal with unreadably small font on a standard TV as 360 players have had to deal with). There are a surprising number of 1080P LCD sets available at Walmart or Bestbuy or the like for around $300 if you wanted to look into it. I too put off getting one of these sets up until a few years back, but it's essentially a requirement now. Also, most HD sets have a VGA port so you could even hook up your PC to it and slap a dinner tray in front of your couch to enjoy PC gaming at much higher resomalutions.
(A warning: far too many HD sets have their initial settings entirely aweful. They "zoom" the image slightly for some reason, creating obvious pixelation artifacts only resolved by switching to "native" mode or whatever it will be called on your set, and they use brigher or "bluer" color settings than the native image actually uses, usually to seem "shinier" than the other TVs in the store but when you get home it just makes everything look unnatural. I'm basically saying you should play around with the TV settings until you find appropriate ones. The right setting to play classic 4:3 games may take a bit to find. You'll know you hit the right one when there's two very small black strips above and below the image as well as the wide black strips on the left and right. Anything else will make older video all pixelated, but THAT setting will actually perfectly scale up the older image to the right pixel to pixel ratio of the TV itself. All other settings are because casual audiences hate black borders FAR more than jagged artifacts (I can ignore them completely myself, as much as I ignore the bezel on the TV)
They're all built primarily with wide screen in mind, so I'd seriously consider picking up an HDTV set at some point when you can afford it since the Wii U will actually be an HD system (and as a result, if you don't have one, get ready to deal with unreadably small font on a standard TV as 360 players have had to deal with). There are a surprising number of 1080P LCD sets available at Walmart or Bestbuy or the like for around $300 if you wanted to look into it. I too put off getting one of these sets up until a few years back, but it's essentially a requirement now. Also, most HD sets have a VGA port so you could even hook up your PC to it and slap a dinner tray in front of your couch to enjoy PC gaming at much higher resomalutions.
(A warning: far too many HD sets have their initial settings entirely aweful. They "zoom" the image slightly for some reason, creating obvious pixelation artifacts only resolved by switching to "native" mode or whatever it will be called on your set, and they use brigher or "bluer" color settings than the native image actually uses, usually to seem "shinier" than the other TVs in the store but when you get home it just makes everything look unnatural. I'm basically saying you should play around with the TV settings until you find appropriate ones. The right setting to play classic 4:3 games may take a bit to find. You'll know you hit the right one when there's two very small black strips above and below the image as well as the wide black strips on the left and right. Anything else will make older video all pixelated, but THAT setting will actually perfectly scale up the older image to the right pixel to pixel ratio of the TV itself. All other settings are because casual audiences hate black borders FAR more than jagged artifacts (I can ignore them completely myself, as much as I ignore the bezel on the TV)
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)