Speculation: Can the E3 2011 Zelda Tech Demo Still Run on the Wii U?

We Zelda faithful continue to eagerly anticipate the day Nintendo finally bestows upon us a brand new Zelda title for the Wii U. Many are hoping for a realistic Zelda title, but Nintendo wants to do a different style. But what comes to mind when someone mentions Zelda U? Probably that delicious looking Tech Demo from E3 2011 that all of us want to see in a playable form. Well, give up all hope now, because the Wii U might not actually be able to run that.

It’s been discovered, as it had been rumored over a year back, that the Wii U actually got downgraded in 2012 due to overheating issues. While a bigger box, more fans, and a bit better technical engineering could’ve helped, due to Iwata’s alleged restrictions on the Wii U’s size and weight when developing the console, the team had to downgrade the console’s specs.

Of course, knowing now that the console’s specs have been downgraded since the making of the 2011 Tech Demo, this leads to the question over whether or not it’s still possible for Zelda U to run on the Wii U with its now downgraded specs. Go back to 2012 and Vigil claimed that in the original Wii U dev kits had a few points that couldn’t work with the new dev kits, causing them to wait for more solid specs.

“When we got the new kits there were some things in the old build that wouldn’t work with the new hardware and we had to wait for updates. So it’s been a little tricky in that regard.”

The Wii U GPU was revealed to be 160 ALUs (Arithmetic logic unit) in current builds; it is not stated how many were in the original dev kit. But the core question remains: will the Wii U be able to achieve the stunning visuals of the

Zelda U tech demo? Probably. While the original dev kits did have heating issues, the second and third batch had downgraded specs, but the final batch also contained a few upgraded specs and the GPU’s clockspeed was increased by around 40%.

But if you’re like me and have no idea what ALUs and Clockspeeds are, just look toward’s Monolith’s upcoming

X. X features truly beautiful and breathtaking visuals that spread across a giant and open world for players to traverse and explore, and it still looks arguably better than Zelda U‘s tech demo. But the most convincing issue is that Nintendo’s tech demos generally run on the lower end of the console’s power.

The

Zelda tech demos for both the Nintendo 64 and GameCube pale in comparison to the titles that were released at the end of their lifespans. This means, more than likely, the tech demo presented at E3 2011 was actually a pretty low-power build. But in the end we’ll just have to wait and see what Nintendo does with the Wii U and Zelda before we can judge the next entry in the franchise and see if it lives up to the hype presented by the tech demo.

Source:

NeoGAF