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Monday, August 7, 2023

Obscusion B-List: 4:3-Only Wii Games That Resisted Widescreen

When it comes to imagery, one of the most important things to consider, from a compositional perspective, is aspect ratio. This determines the height & width of an image & makes all the difference in how something is framed within said image. When it comes to moving pictures, whether that be film, television, or gaming, aspect ratio has played a major role in helping define them. For example, up until 1953 theatrical film used a slightly rectangular 1.375:1 aspect ratio, but once television (& it's ~1.333 aspect ratio, a.k.a. "4:3") started becoming more prominent & popular Hollywood studios decided to start filming in wider aspect ratios, eventually finding 1.85:1 (a "widescreen" aspect ratio) to be the most common standard. This was mainly because it offered an experience that 4:3 TVs couldn't properly replicate without either utilizing letterboxing (so as to offer the full image, though now smaller) or "pan & scan" (which artificially added camera "movement", so as to maintain proper attention). Though first sold as early as 1993, widescreen TVs wouldn't really become more widely available until the mid-to-late 00s, & today the idea of "aspect ratio" is mostly moot, as the standard 16:9 or 16:10 ratios that TVs & monitors come in now are compatible with most widescreen presentations (though there will be some letterboxing for the wilder ratios, like CinemaScope). In fact, watching anything 4:3 on modern screens requires pillarboxing to accommodate things, to some people's dismay (but, please, don't ever stretch the image!).

But how did all of this affect gaming?


While there was the rare game now & then that offered a widescreen option, usually by way of either letterboxing (though some faked this by just cropping the image) or anamorphic widescreen, 4:3 "standard definition" (or 3:4, for "tate mode" games, like many shooters) was the domain of video gaming until the launch of the Xbox 360 in 2005, followed by the launch of the PlayStation 3 in 2006. Both of these consoles were designed to be played in "high definition" (i.e. 720p, 1080i, & 1080p), which by their nature were (generally) 16:9 widescreen resolutions, and while there were some games released on those consoles that offered 4:3 display options (most notably the Halo & Gears of War games, even all the way into 2013!), every single game released on these consoles were developed with 16:9 (or, at least, widescreen) in mind. However, also released in late 2006 was Nintendo's then newest console, the Wii, a console that didn't support HD at all & only topped out at 480p resolution, i.e. 4:3. Despite this, most games released on Wii (&, to no surprise, the Wii itself) did offer anamorphic widescreen support, and there are even some Wii games that are actually widescreen-only & will force letterboxing on a 4:3 display. However, there are also Wii games that, shockingly enough, were designed to only ever display in 4:3, and this was something that most people didn't even realize was a thing until the console's successor, the Wii U. At first the Wii U would simply display all Wii games in widescreen, but an early update regarding "Wii Mode" actually made the console force pillarboxing for 4:3-only games. To be fair, there were some reports about 4:3-only games as early as the Wii's launch in 2006, but the Wii itself actually didn't force pillarboxing (to my knowledge, at least), so most people wound up unknowingly stretching the image if they were using widescreen TVs & didn't adjust the screen manually.

Eventually, a Github user named Gingerbeardman created a complete database of every single Wii game (both physical & digital) that only displayed in 4:3 using the Dolphin emulator & vWii, and after removing things like duplicate listings, Virtual Console, & auto-generated INI files, I collected the list into an easier to read Excel format for myself. In the end, the Wii wound up with a total of around 513 games that are 4:3-only (or ~31.28% of the entire catalog), 399 released physically & 114 released digitally via WiiWare. To be fair, I don't think the list is 100% accurate, as there are a handful of games I know aren't 4:3-only but are on this list, but I think that's within the margin of error, considering where the info was sourced from. What's most surprising, though, is that games of this ilk continued to be made all the way until the Wii U's launch in 2012, a good number of years after widescreen TVs had become standardized & 4:3 was already a bygone relic. So let's take a look at what I feel are the most notable, interesting, or simply weird instances of Wii games that are 4:3-only and see how Nintendo's surprisingly mainstream success of a console was also the last holdout for standard definition gaming.


We're going to start with 2006, as even though the Wii was only around for a little less than 1.5 months for that year, it still resulted in 24 games that were 4:3-only. However, I'll also bring up 2007 as well right now, since I'll be skipping that year for the sake of maintaining the traditional "six entries per B-List" rule I utilize, and that year saw 98 4:3-only games. For some of these games (for both 2006 & 2007) it was simply a case of the Wii receiving a port from another console, like the PS2 or arcade. This included titles like Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 & 3, Castle of Shikigami III, Counter Force/ExZeus, Ghost Squad, Impossible Mission, Medal of Honor: Vanguard, & Octomania, etc. For others, it was likely just a case of developers sticking with what they knew, and what they knew was developing games for a 4:3 aspect ratio, since that was (for the most part) the only ratio that they knew for literal decades; there were a decent number of PS2 & GameCube games that featured widescreen support, but they were still few & far between. This gave us the likes of SD Gundam: Scad Hammers & MS Sensen 0079, Rayman Raving Rabbids 1 & 2, Bust a Move Bash!, Domino Rally/Minon: Everyday Hero, Opoona, & even the first Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution game. However, the game I want to focus on here for this B-List is a case where sticking to 4:3 kind of lessened its potential impact: Trauma Center: Second Opinion.

Released in 2005 for the Nintendo DS, Trauma Center: Under the Knife was a surgical simulator/visual novel developed by Atlus that took advantage of the DS' lower touch screen to allow players to "physically" perform surgery on patients, all while telling your usual fictional medical drama, with some sci-fi flair for the fun of it. The game absolutely exceeded all expectations outside of Japan, and with the Wii coming it was decided that the next game wouldn't be a sequel, but instead a full-on remake for home console. This utilized the Wii Remote's pointer & motion controls (as well as the Nunchuk) in place of the DS' touch screen, while the story was expanded on with the addition of a new deuteragonist, hence the "Second Opinion" subtitle outside of Japan. Despite coming out so relatively soon after the DS original, it was even a launch title for the Wii in North America & Japan, TC:SO was still more or less as well received as the game it was remaking, but there was a common complaint, at least outside of Japan: The lack of widescreen support. Personally, I honestly have to agree with that, as the entire point of this "Wiimake" was to expand & repurpose the DS game for literal brand new hardware. Therefore, it is kind of weird that Atlus kept the same exact aspect ratio as each of the DS' twin screens, which in turn kind of lessens the "remake" aspect of TC:SO, as now it just feels more like the same game, only now with motion controls & prettier visuals, instead of actually feeling like a "true" remake, if you catch my drift. Atlus must have noticed that reaction, too, as the two later Wii entries in this series (2007's Trauma Center: New Blood & 2010's Trauma Team) both included widescreen support, so at least something was learned from this experience.

I figure I should at least acknowledge one other game along each main entry as a bonus, in passing, if only because there were so many. Since we're skipping over 2007, I have chosen that year's Aquarius Baseball: Genkai no, Sono Saki he/The Limit, and Beyond, a Japan-exclusive baseball game named after the sports drink made by The Coca Cola Company that first appeared in Japan. Why this game, in particular? Simply because it was actually published by the Japanese division of The Coca Cola Company! The Wii was such a massively instant success that it actually had a video game published by a literal beverage company, and unlike Pepsi Invaders in 1983 this was an actual retail release.


The year 2008 was, in retrospect, 4:3's final year of relevancy in terms of technology, as more & more TV programming started switching over to widescreen & the format war between Blu-Ray & HD DVD ended, but DVD was still outselling BD (and would continue to do so until streaming came in & affected both), and there still wasn't exactly an undeniable need for most people to upgrade; "it looks better" wasn't enough. Fittingly, this year would also be the one to see the most 4:3-only Wii games released, with a total of 152; 2008 was also when WiiWare debuted, so that's 120 physical games & 32 digital games that were 4:3-only that year. While there were still ports from other hardware that explained some of this (Resident Evil [Remake] & RE0, Rygar: The Battle of Argus, Sega Bass Fishing, Pajama Sam, Spy Fox, Freddie Fish, etc.), the simple fact is that a lot of the 4:3-only games released in 2008 were releases made to essentially just take advantage of the Wii's momentum, and it was likely "cheaper" & easier for companies to just stick with what's familiar for screen space than to (in essence) future-proof their games. Sure, there were good (or at least decent & well intentioned) games in that bunch, but for every Blast Works, Harvest Moon, Agatha Christie, or even Simple Series release there was a Kidz Sports, Kawasaki, Cocoto, Data Design Interactive, & other "shovelware" release to counteract most of the good will the other titles had; likewise, all of the 4:3-only WiiWare games from this year aren't notable, in the least. So for our second entry I went with a game that's generally considered very good (even if it's often cited as the weakest entry in its series), but by the time it saw English release its 4:3-only presentation was actually already negated over in its home country of Japan: Shiren the Wanderer.

Debuting back in 1995, the original Shiren the Wanderer on the Super Famicom was actually the second ever entry in (Spike) Chunsoft's iconic Mystery Dungeon series of roguelikes (the first being Draqon Quest IV spin-off Torneko's Big Adventure), and has since acted as the company's way to produce MD games without licensing another company's IP. That being said, though, the Shiren sub-series has only seen the occasional entry, with large gaps of years happening three different times, most recently being the current lack of a new entry since 2013 (2010, if you don't count pachinko). That would likely explain why Shiren the Wanderer 3: The Sleeping Princess & the Karakuri Mansion (or just simply Shiren the Wanderer for its English release by Atlus) for the Wii wound up being a 4:3-only game when released in Japan in 2008, as the last "proper" entry (i.e. not counting the 2004 mobile game that wasn't even a roguelike) before that was the spin-off Shiren the Wanderer Gaiden: Asuka the Swordswoman for Dreamcast & Windows back in 2002. Not just that, but the Mystery Dungeon series itself looked to be 4:3-only (at least, for initial release) until 2012, when it moved over to the 3DS & finally became 100% widescreen. The only exceptions would be ports to the PSP, which necessitated widescreen because of the screen... of which Shiren 3 was one of those cases. You see, on January 28, 2010, literally less than two weeks before Atlus released the game in English, Shiren 3 was released on the PSP in Japan, showing the game now running in proper widescreen. Now, true, there really wasn't much of anything Atlus could have done at that point, but it is amusing that by the time we got the game in English, it had been made outdated mere days earlier in Japan, though the fact that its English release wasn't until 2010 made its 4:3-only presentation all the more outdated, to begin with.

As for a bonus entry from that list, let's go with TNA Impact!, also from 2008, if only to show that even when a Wii game is intended to have some parity with its HD brethren, it might still be restricted from even having widescreen support. Due to this being heavily multiplatform it is a bit tricky to truly tell online if this was a 4:3-only Wii title, but considering that this specific version was done by the same studio as the PS2 version (Point of View), it is entirely possible. After all, out of the 4,376 games released on the PS2, only around 300 or so actually support widescreen (& of those, TNA Impact! is not included), with a good number of those actually faking it by simply cropping the original 4:3 image.


From what I can find out, 2009 looks to be the year where 16:9 finally became the standardized aspect ratio, as most TV broadcasts had moved over to being produced in widescreen by this point, while widescreen TVs finally overtook 4:3 TVs in overall sales, as manufacturers started halting production of SD displays. Therefore, it's not a shock that fewer 4:3-only Wii games saw release this year, with a total of only 124, split 81 physical & 43 digital, though that was still the second-most in a single year for the console, & the most in general for WiiWare; the numbers drastic go down from here on out. In terms of what was still only available in "full screen", we once again have a bunch of ports of older games that were originally designed specifically for 4:3 (Mad Dog McCree Gunslinger Pack, Broken Sword: Director's Cut, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus, Phantom Brave, Phalanx), as well as the usual "other" options (Build 'N Race, U-Sing, The Biggest Loser) & games ported over from PS2 (Super PickUps, Ready 2 Rumble Revolution, Vertigo) or even mobile phones (Crystal Defenders R1 & R2). Probably what's most interesting, though, is that a decent amount of these were Japan-exclusive (half of all of the JP-exclusive 4:3-only WiiWare games came out in this year alone!), such as 81 Diver Wii, Radirgy Noa Wii, SD Gundam: G Generation Wars, Winning Post World, & even a Haruhi Suzumiya title. However, my pick for 2009 would have to be the one that literally brought an end to 4:3 for an entire long-running franchise (at least on home console): Super Robot Wars Neo.

Debuting back in 1991 on the original Game Boy, Banpresto's (now Bandai Namco's) Super Robot Wars series has remained one of the ultimate "dream crossover" concepts out there in gaming, primarily for fans of giant robots. Released on almost every single major console it could come out on (it's seriously easier to just name consoles that don't have at least one SRW game), the series was notable for sometimes taking its time before moving on to new generations of hardware, most notably not moving over to the PlayStation 3 until 2012, instead sticking with the PS2 until 2009 & then moving over to the PSP for the interim. This is also true, to some extent with truly moving away from the 4:3 aspect ratio, as aside from some remakes & ports on the Xbox 360 & PSP during the 00s, the franchise wouldn't fully move over to widescreen for brand new entries until 2011 with SRW Z2: Hakai-hen for the PSP; the WonderSwan & GBA did use ever-so-slightly wider aspect ratios than 4:3, but neither are considered "widescreen". Because of that, the final 4:3 SRW game (for home consoles) wound up being SRW Neo for the Wii in late 2009, which itself was also a "final" entry for other reasons. A spiritual successor to SRW GC/XO, Neo would arguably be the last truly "themed" SRW game, featuring a cast made up mostly of early 90s mech anime aimed at children, similar to GC/XO's focus on the 80s, K's focus on the 00s, Compact 3's focus on obscurities, W's focus on titles that saw official English release, or D's focus on darker & post-apocalyptic stories. Neo was also the last entry to see release on a Nintendo home console until SRW T on the Switch in 2019 (the DS & 3DS saw entries until 2015), & even then the Switch's portable capabilities kind of dilutes that; one could argue that Neo remains the last "true" Nintendo home console entry. However, Neo being a 4:3-only SRW game is a bit bizarre, seeing as it's fully 3D (which is still a rarity for the franchise, actually), and the fact that developer Sazanami had both previously co-developed XO & later made Operation Extend for the PSP (which used Neo's gameplay systems), both of which were 100% widescreen. Regardless, while SRW Neo isn't a widely known entry in the series, it is generally considered a bit of an underrated one, with gameplay systems that (outside of OE) still remain wholly unique to this day for SRW.

As for our next bonus entry, I'm going with Puyo Puyo 7, also from 2009. While not the only 4:3-only Wii entry for this series, as 2007's Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary is also on that list, Puyo Puyo 7 is all the more weird for being 4:3-only, as this Wii port of the DS original from earlier that same year came out the same exact day as the PSP port, so Sonic Team & h.a.n.d. literally made a 4:3-only version & a 16:9-only version simultaneously, and even showed them in tandem for promotional purposes! Luckily, Sonic Team wised up for the next entry, 2011's Puyo Puyo!! 20th Annviersary, & made the Wii port 16:9 compatible to match up with the 3DS & PSP ports.


Like I said earlier, 2009 was the last year in which the Wii saw a notable amount of 4:3-only games, as 2010 would only see 70 games of that ilk, 47 physical & 23 digital. In all honesty, by this point the stuff that still refused to go widescreen was mostly just the kind of games that no one would really care about today, like Burger Bot, Pirates Plund-arrr, Chuck E. Cheese's Party Games, or Calvin Tucker's Redneck Jamboree. Sure, there were still some ports of older games that still happened (Sakura Wars V: So Long, My Love, Data East Arcade Classics, Milestone Shooting Collection 2, Namco Museum Megamix, Cave Story, Fast Draw Showdown), but come 2010 4:3-only had mostly become the refuse for the lowest of the low. However, there was one 4:3-only Wii game that did catch my eye, mainly because by this point the games based on this franchise had already long moved over to widescreen, including a prior release on the Wii itself, yet this one stayed 4:3 to the very end: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's: Duel Transer.

There's no need to introduce Yu-Gi-Oh! & its Duel Monsters trading card game, as both have remained somewhat relevant to this very day, with new anime & cards (plus new rules in how to use those cards) still coming out. Naturally, there have been tons of video game adaptations of the TCG, and with a (mostly) static playfield there really wasn't much need to hasten a transition over to widescreen from 4:3. However, due to the sheer number of YGO! video games out there, the series actually moved over to widescreen rather early with the original YGO! GX: Tag Force game for the PSP in 2006 (& even earlier, if you want to count the GBA games). While the franchise stayed mostly on handhelds between 2005 & 2009, though there was a PS2 game in 2007 that was 4:3-only, YGO! would finally move over to widescreen on home console with YGO! 5D's: Wheelie Breakers, a racing game with card game mechanics due to that series' penchant for "riding duels". From there on, outside of the usual DS entries & a short-lived mobile game, YGO! video games had moved over to featuring widescreen support... which is what makes YGO! 5D's: Duel Transer (Master of the Cards in Europe) all the more mind boggling by being a 4:3-only Wii game, especially since Wheelie Breakers had already been a 16:9 compatible game on the same console. Again, this kind of game worked just fine in 4:3 & only benefitted so much from an increase in screen size, but it just seems like a downgrade, especially this late into the Wii's life. Amusingly enough, this actually wouldn't be the last 4:3 YGO! game, as there was one more DS entry in 2011, but following that the series' video games have all been widescreen, making Duel Transer really feel like a stubborn hold out that shouldn't be associating with the other 4:3-only Wii originals of its year.

In terms of anything else noteworthy from Gingerbeardman's list from 2010, the only other one I could notice was the Netflix Instant Streaming Disc, which allowed Wii owners to access Netflix for a year, before Microsoft's initial digital exclusivity deal for Xbox 360 expired. However, all footage I could find involving this disc, which I imagine was the same overall program as the later digital option, is 16:9, and that would make sense considering how you could watch stuff like movies with it. We're also skipping over 2011 for this list, mainly because while I did find some interesting picks from the list, I couldn't fully verify if they were truly 4:3-only or not; still, that year saw just 42 4:3-only Wii games, 27 physical & 15 digital. 2011 also saw the last remainder of older 4:3-only ports to Wii, namely La-Mulana & MDK2, both on WiiWare.

"The PlayStation Can Produce Mind-Boggling Effects"...
Honestly, I think the PS1 could actually run this Wii game.

By the year 2012 it was easy to see that video game developers & publishers had now fully accepted that 16:9 was the norm (I mean, even the Nintendo 3DS was out by this point), as there would only be a mere two games released on the Wii that were 4:3-only. Still, just the very idea that brand new 4:3-only games even came out in this year, the same one in which the Wii U would come out & just a year before the launch of the Xbox One & PlayStation 4, is kind of mind boggling. Then again, the PlayStation 2's final official release, the Europe-exclusive Pro Evolution Soccer 2014, would come out only a literal week before the PS4's launch in November 2013, so maybe it wasn't that bizarre, after all. One of those 4:3-only Wii games was physical, which was Karaoke Revolution by Konami... or, at least, a Karaoke Revolution, because there were a bunch of these games released over the years at the time, and the list actually makes it hard to tell which exact one it is for this year; also, that kind of game being 4:3-only really isn't surprising at all & would make for a pretty boring pick. Luckily, though, the other 4:3-only Wii game for 2012 was a WiiWare-exclusive & has a much more interesting history behind it: Stonekeep: Bones of the Ancestors.

Released back in 1995 for MS-DOS & Windows PCs, Stonekeep by Interplay was a first-person dungeon crawler that became way more ambitious than originally intended, going from a planned nine-month development cycle for a game released on floppy disk that would cost ~$50,000 to make to a five-year development cycle for a game released on CD that wound up costing $5,000,000 to make & was a mix of pre-rendered environments, digitized actors, & live-action cinematics. Despite apparently "weak" sales in the long run & a mixed reception, Stonekeep today is considered a beloved cult classic & would even receive a 1999 novel set in the same world. Interplay also put a sequel, Stonekeep 2: Godmaker, into development before eventually cancelling the whole thing in 2001 after another five years of development, likely due in part to Titus Interactive becoming majority owner of the company. After some rough times in the 00s, which included a second round of bankruptcy that necessitated selling the Fallout IP to Bethesda in 2007 to help get out of, Interplay slowly returned to proper game development & publishing, mostly via re-releasing its old catalog via places like GOG & Steam, as well as some porting, like MDK2 for WiiWare, which itself a bit of a porting miracle, as WiiWare was restricted to a maximum size of just 40MB. Seeing potential with WiiWare, Interplay decided to produce a brand new Stonekeep game, one completely unrelated to the unfinished Godmaker, in 2012.

Developed by Alpine Studios, Stonekeep: Bones of the Ancestors may have gone on to sell well for Interplay, but what players got in return was the epitome of "Wii shovelware" with terrible motion controls, a stupidly simplified dungeon crawling experience, visuals that could legitimately be done on an N64 (though they'd be blurrier, admittedly) or even a PS1, and an end product that was easily seen as nothing more than a cash grab that used the name of Stonekeep to get the attention of the cult fandom the original game had earned; honestly, the fact that it was a 4:3-only Wii game released in 2012 was the least of its worries. Today, you can still buy the original Stonekeep via GOG or Steam, while Bones of the Ancestors is (thankfully) no longer available to purchase due to the Wii Shop's closure in early 2019. Honestly, Interplay should probably just port Stonekeep to modern consoles with Quality of Life additions, like an automap, and just act like Bones of the Ancestors never actually happened.


As you can see, we've been tackling this completely chronologically, so if 2012 only had two 4:3-only games released on the Wii, then what else could there be? Well, there was one more 4:3-only Wii game ever released... and it was in the year 2015! Yes, at a time where 4:3 was truly well & dead, the Xbox One, PS4, & Wii U were all focused on delivering HD gaming, and the 3DS & PS Vita were at least offering widescreen gaming on the go, one developer/publisher combo somehow decided that 4:3 was good enough, though I can at least see why they seemingly felt that way, in this case. Released only in Europe, De Ontdekker en het Mysterie van de Diamanten Scarabee (Dutch for "The Explorer and the Mystery of the Diamond Scarab") was actually developed by Visio & published by MAD Multimedia to be played by both blind & sighted people, which is interesting. While there were games made for the visually impaired prior to this, like WARP's Real Sound: Kaze no Regret for Saturn (& later Dreamcast), they tended to focus on offering less "active" experiences, like being audio dramas that required minimal input. De Ontdekker, however, wanted to be a full on 3D adventure, one which the blind can play via audio cues to let them know where they were in three dimensional space in relation to things like obstacles & the like, while sighted players could still enjoy it like any other game of its ilk; there was even support for the Wii Balance Board.

Unfortunately, seeing as it was only ever released in Europe (& even possibly only the Netherlands?), though it did offer English language support, there is very little information regarding De Ontdekker en het Mysterie van de Diamanten Scarabee, outside of a Dutch news report on the game (with English subs) & a trailer showing it being played by sight impaired children, both of which are shown in 4:3 with pillarboxing; there aren't even any "traditional" screen shots to find online. Looking at the footage you can see in the videos, it does look like Visio did in fact make it in 4:3, and even the TVs the game is played on look to be 4:3, and in that regard it kind of makes sense. After all, if the game is intended to be playable for the visually impaired & blind, then it really doesn't make much of a difference what the aspect ratio is, and in fact one can argue that it might actually be a benefit for the game to have less on screen "real estate", in that regard. By this point, the idea of 4:3 gaming sort of returned via indie developers, but that was either via games that were designed to be played on modern hardware but shown in a 4:3 playfield or via games that were literally being made for older hardware, which had already been around for a good while by this point. However, those games are made that way for the nostalgia, either for the gameplay experience itself or to be accurate to the aged hardware itself. De Ontdekker, though, may very well be the last 4:3 game ever made that wasn't designed for the nostalgia, but instead was simply a result of the unique situation it was designed around, and for that it actually has my respect.
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The Wii continued to see games released for it all the way until 2020, though even by 2015 it had mostly become the repository for yearly entries in series like Just Dance & Let's Sing, and the only reason things stopped was simply because certain parts of Nintendo (like Nintendo of America) simply no longer had the ability to get the equipment to allow them to print physical discs; otherwise, we might continue to see Just Dance games on the Wii to this very day. But the (main part) of the Wii's life also reflects the end of the 4:3 aspect ratio's relevancy in modern technology. At first, it was still considered a viable direction to go in, as those early days of HD gaming were (in some ways) still just a little too far ahead for some people; just look at Dead Rising's controversy regarding its text on SDTVs back in 2006. Over time, though, HDTVs became more & more affordable, networks eventually all transitioned from producing 4:3 SD content to 16:9 HD, the Xbox 360 & PS3 both helped make HDMI the way to hook up to a TV, and it just made more sense for developers to include widescreen support for their Wii games, even if it wasn't exactly "true". By the start of the 2010s the majority of studios still sticking to 4:3-only for their Wii games were either doing so because they were working with older games that had to be in that aspect ratio to begin with... or they were (for the most part, at least) phoning it in for a cheap buck.

I've actually been playing a bunch of Wii games here & there this year via my Wii U gamepad, and while I am sometimes surprised at which games actually do offer widescreen support it's also admittedly kind of quaint to see a 4:3-only game pop up on that screen every now & then. Today it makes for a reminder of a time now long gone, a time when things were changing yet Nintendo stuck to what it knew, which in doing so wound up (accidentally?) giving the old way of experiencing video games, a way that had been the norm since the beginning, a final hurrah for a few more years.

Trauma Center: Second Opinion © 2006 Atlus
Shiren the Wanderer 3 © 2008/2010 Chunsoft © Sugiyama Kobo
Super Robot Wars Neo © Takehiko Ito/Shueisha・Sunrise © Movie International/Shigeo Tsubota © Sunrise © Sotsu・Sunrise © Dynamic Planning © Ashi Pro 1981 © Ashi Pro 1990 © 1989 Go Nagai/Dynamic Planning・Sunrise © Go Nagai・Ken Ishikawa/Dynamic Planning・New Saotome Research Institute
Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's: Duel Transer © Kazuki Takahashi Studio Dice/Shueisha・TV Tokyo・NAS © 2010 Konami Digital Entertainment
Stonekeep: Bones of the Ancestors © 2012 Interplay Entertainment Corp.
(No copyright listing can be found online for De Ontdekker en het Mysterie van de Diamanten Scarabee, due to its lack of information online, in general)

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the read. Very insightful and interesting.

    ReplyDelete