news via palgn

Good news for the retro purists: news filtering through from the US suggests that games downloaded on the Wii's Virtual Console are proving to be unerringly authentic, right down to the resolution. See, it turns out that the majority of NES and SNES games originally sported resolutions of 256×224 or 256×240, and upgrading those on-screen resolutions for the Wii would actually make the VC version of titles look worse on high definition sets. Meaning standard definition sets would actually display NES and SNES games best. It's like raaaaaain on your wedding day. Y'know, ironic.

Anyway, it turns out that the clever old Virtual Console switches between 480i and 240p when you fire up a title from the NES and SNES years. Meaning that - for once - owners of SD sets are the ones with the last laugh. And quite right, really - there'd be something horribly wrong about playing the original Super Mario Bros. in spangly new high definition.