Graphical Effects Missing on Wii Metroid Prime

[Logan Westbrook]

Graphical Effects Missing on Wii Metroid Prime

Eagle-eyed fans have notice that there are certain graphical effects are missing from the Metroid Prime bundle recently released for the Wii.


The video above, created by YouTube member PiccoloCube [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGjgfSwOPw0], shows a comparison between the two, with the Wii version appearing at around the three minute mark. From watching the video, it's clear that certain water and particle effects are missing. The differences between the two versions are subtle, but quite noticeable once they've been pointed out.

The graphics aren't the only change either, as the first two games can only be played with the Wiimote and nunchuck and not the Game Cube controller. What is confusing is why these changes have been made, as the three games, even with the new controls and the other, nebulous , improvements that have been added, should all fit nicely on a single dual layer disc.

Nintendo isn't going to have made these changes arbitrarily, so they question remains as to why it did make them. I'm not a game developer though, so I can't even begin to imagine what the reason is. If you fine folks have any suggestions, we'd love to hear them.

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5354254/metroid-prime-trilogy-version-looks-worse-than-the-originals]


Permalink

 

[fix-the-spade]

That's bizarre.

No other word for it, perhaps with faster view tracking the Wii controls give they were getting some slow down. Cube Prime can stutter a bit if you're moving fast or there's a lot going on, maybe Wii controls exacerbated it.

Nintendo take too much care with their ports for it to just have been 'forgotten'. No doubt they'll never admit there's even anything missing, the min boggles at why they cut the excellent Cube controls though.

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

-snip-

The gun part is nothing to do with processing or bad porting, it's simply because the effects used on the gun were on a 2D plane, and now that the gun can be moved freely, the effects would look stupid and out of place. Besides that, the game looks better overall.

As for the water, I'm not sure.

 

[HardRockSamurai]

Strange, but not a real big problem.

To be honest, when I played Metroid Prime on the Gamecube, I thought the water effects looked weird; so I'm actually glad that it's been removed.

The only thing that puzzles me is the ice beam. The frost effect from the first game was just a simple screen overlay; was it really that hard to port to the Wii?

 

[ZeroMachine]

My guess? It's a type of emulator issue. You see them all the time on collections of old games ported to new systems. There were quite a few (sound-wise, though) with the Gamecube's Megaman X Colletion.

 

[Proteus214]

To be fair, particle effects are crazy memory hogs in a high end graphics game, but still, the fact that the Wii version doesn't have them is pretty sad.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I didn't notice much difference in the beam effects, but I did notice the absence of a ripple effect in the water on the Wii version. Strange.

 

[Schlorgan]

Nintendo's spending all their money on casual games, and since they don't have any hard-core games for this year, they threw this together to try their hardest to compete with the PS3 and 360 price drops

 

[Schlorgan]

My guess? It's a type of emulator issue. You see them all the time on collections of old games ported to new systems. There were quite a few (sound-wise, though) with the Gamecube's Megaman X Colletion.

But there were no problems like that in RE4 on the Wii

 

[Snotnarok]

That's stupid, the details in these games are unmatched even today, you can see the reflection of Samus's face, you can fog up your visor, your gun freezes up, goes on fire and they took it out? It's not even emulated, the Wii has gamecube hardware in it, it's literally running gamecube when it plays the GCN disc. It's not even a graphics issue I really got sucked into this game because there was always something new you noticed every time, and it was cool just seeing that extra detail put in by the developers.

I had no interest in the Trilogy in the first place (because I have all of these amazing games already) and I definitely have less interest in it because they cut out parts and censored it.

 

[ZeroMachine]

My guess? It's a type of emulator issue. You see them all the time on collections of old games ported to new systems. There were quite a few (sound-wise, though) with the Gamecube's Megaman X Colletion.

But there were no problems like that in RE4 on the Wii

Sometimes it happens, sometimes it don't. Depends on the game/emulator/system/people porting it yada, yada, yada. Too many variables for them all to come out good or bad.

 

[Eruanno]

Big news, the Wii's graphics are shit.

No, but seriously, this is a bit odd. Reducing the graphics-bling on the newer console is a strange step.

 

[AceDiamond]

Nintendo's spending all their money on casual games, and since they don't have any hard-core games for this year, they threw this together to try their hardest to compete with the PS3 and 360 price drops

*ahem*

Spoiler: I

Spoiler: beg

Spoiler: to differ

Anyway I'm pretty sure this is something that happened in the emulation process. The unrealistically-minded people probably thought they were going to rebuild the first two games from the ground up, because that happens all the time in the industry, right?

Spoiler

no it doesn't

 

[Covarr]

The water ripple was ugly, and frankly made morphball Samus harder to see than she should have been.

The gun effects were 2D effects. They worked just fine in the GC version with a static gun, but since the gun in the Wii version moves, it would have been really ugly, unless they redid it from scratch in 3D, which would be much more taxing than a 2D effect, and cost more money to make.

Also worth noting, these games aren't emulated. Emulation restricts it to all the limitations of the Gamecube (GC controller, in particular). They PORTED the game, which was likely a simple task since the two systems have remarkably similar architecture. Besides which, the Wii isn't NEARLY powerful enough to emulate the GC. Hell, the PS3 (80GB) can barely emulate the PS2, and GC is more powerful and therefore more difficult to emulate.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Megacherv]

Suggestions...game bugs? We are contemplating on something that Nintendo might not have wanted to happen...

It can't be that hard to port, really? Aren't the Wii and Gamecube's hardware VERY similar?

EDIT: I did notice that Samus' suit in the Wii section of the video, the texture detail looked quite low (I know the suits were different), it just looked like a solid colour with shadow effects to me, especially with the ball.

 

[AceDiamond]

Suggestions...game bugs? We are contemplating on something that Nintendo might not have wanted to happen...

It can't be that hard to port, really? Aren't the Wii and Gamecube's hardware VERY similar?

They might be but the graphical requirements to make something look good on the Wii differs from how it would on the Gamecube, because of the motion control.

 

[Megacherv]

Suggestions...game bugs? We are contemplating on something that Nintendo might not have wanted to happen...

It can't be that hard to port, really? Aren't the Wii and Gamecube's hardware VERY similar?

They might be but the graphical requirements to make something look good on the Wii differs from how it would on the Gamecube, because of the motion control.

Yeah, but still, why are we contemplating on something that can easily just be a bug in the software?

 

[ratix2]

It's probably a result of shoddy porting that comes from not actually doing much work in making the compilation. Seeing as it's just a quick buck for Nintendo I doubt they put much effort into it.

My guess? It's a type of emulator issue. You see them all the time on collections of old games ported to new systems. There were quite a few (sound-wise, though) with the Gamecube's Megaman X Colletion.

its this. nintendo doesent usually port their games over to new platforms, they usually just make an emulator to make them run. both zelda collections for the gamecube (oot and master quest and then the zelda collection) for example used emulation to make the games run on the gc, and these emulators were subsequently modified and used to run full emulators on hacked systems. it has more to do with console companies and game developers not keeping the code for their engines and sometimes "losing" source code for their games (as two examples, with mega man 9 the original tool sets were no longer in existence, the game actually uses 3d rendering in a way that makes the game look like the originals, and with panzer dragoon saga sega "lost" both the source code to the game and the engine).

the problem with this theory is that the wii and the gamecube use the exact same hardware (cpu, gpu, etc.) with the wii hardware running at much higher clock speeds and with more memory, so they shouldnt need to use an emulator with either prime game at all. if they did use an emulator id have to wonder why (though, if they "lost" the source code to either game or the engine that would be one reason). but seeing as nintendo used the engine used for metroid prime in several other games (including mp3, albeit an updated version) i cant see this happening.

im going to say that the code was ported over to the mp3 engine and the missing features were either lost in translation or the current build of the engine just didnt support them.