Report: Nvidia Shield Ending Availability of HD Wii Ports in China
Posted on August 03 2021 by Mike Midwood
In 2018, a small number of Wii games became available for Nvidia Shield owners in China. The Nvidia Shield is powered by the Tegra X1, the same processor found in the Nintendo Switch. With such a limited release, the release of these titles was likely intended to serve as a test run for potential Wii emulation on Switch. According to industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, who reports on the video game market in Asia, the ability to download these Wii titles is being shut down.
The titles available for download were Punchout!!, Donkey Kong Country Returns, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. While the playable versions on Nvidia Shield are often referred to as ports, a deep dive done by Digital Foundry, specifically examining Super Mario Galaxy, deduced that these versions were likely the product of upscaled emulation. Notably, the HD version of Twilight Princess available on Nvidia Shield is not the Wii U title Twilight Princess HD, though there are claims that it actually looks better as an emulated upscale of the GameCube and Wii release.
While not officially confirmed, the ability to download these Wii titles on Nvidia Shield is expected to end soon, though they will remain playable if already purchased. Ahmad states that the Shield performed poorly in China and each of these Wii titles only sold a few thousand copies. The above Digital Foundry analysis also details the extreme hassle associated with accessing these games stateside, requiring either a Chinese Nvidia Shield or manually compiling the Chinese version’s operating system. Given this, and that it was likely just an experiment to test the Switch’s Wii emulation capabilities, these titles will likely fade from accessibility with little fanfare.
Do you have an Nvidia Shield? Should any Zelda games come to non-Nintendo consoles in an official capacity? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Daniel Ahmad (via Nintendo Everything)
Image: Nintendo/Nvidia/Gizmodo
Hi, I’m Mike Midwood and I’m a Senior Editor at ZeldaDungeon! Video games and literature are my greatest joys in life. An avid Zelda fan, some of my other favorite games include the Resident Evil and Dark Souls series. I hope you enjoy my content here on ZeldaDungeon!
“The sword has no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage.”
