I’ve been preparing for a trip that starts tomorrow, and I didn’t even notice that the game I was rushing my way through was still in early access. Sometimes early access games send full-version keys ahead of release. Since it doesn’t release until I’m out of state, though, I rushed to wrap up this absurdly overlong comparison of the Mclassic working on Nintendo Wii (and Gamecube through backward compatibility), which is a bit of a best-case scenario considering how excellent its 480p Upscale process is. As expected, the mClassic ended up looking great on everything I threw at it, and while I preferred the Portta in a few instances, I only preferred it when paired with the mClassic. That’s a pretty convincing performance, and unlike the Playstation 2 (which needed an expensive line doubler to counteract the mClassic’s refusal to upscale the interlaced games that make up the bulk of its library), the mClassic worked on every Wii game I threw at it with no extra hardware needed beyond a simple component to HDMI converter. Much easier.
First, an ad for mClassic because I’m almost out of money
I’ve never bothered elaborating on how these ads work because I’ve generally been negative enough to avoid necessitating an explanation, but basically, that’s an Amazon ad. I get a kickback if you buy an mClassic from that link, or anything else on Amazon post-click until the cookie expires or is overwritten by another site’s cookie. It doesn’t mean that any of this is sponsored, nor does it impact anything I’m about to say. I railed on the mClassic for a bit because of its misleading “works on PS2” claims and pointed out how it was beneficial/harmful to different Switch games. All of that’s to say that the following positivity is real, and I’d sooner shut this site down and set it on fire than make claims I couldn’t stand behind.
Disclaimer over.
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Every game will have the same four comparisons: the mClassic-only upscale, the Portta-only upscale, the Portta upscale to 1080p with the mClassic enabled, and the Portta upscale to 720p with the mClassic enabled and further upscaling to 1080p. Everything is scaled to 1080p, basically, but at different resolutions to trigger different levels of mClassic processing. The mClassic-only upscale is fascinating; for one thing, it centers the image properly instead of cramming the picture into the right corner of the frame like the Portta, but it also has a major impact on the colors and aliasing while giving the image a softer, darker look that’s very analog. If you want to wage a holy war against jaggies and hide the compression artifacts of pre-rendered video to the best of your ability, the mClassic-only upscale is going to be for you.
The Portta, on the other hand, is much brighter and less flattering. Pre-rendered videos will be filled with blocky artifacts, and the aliasing is so pronounced that you could murder a rich relative by pushing them down the stair-stepping. In this video and every subsequent one on this page, I prefer either the mClassic-only upscale or the Portta 720p to mClassic 1080p upscale combo, and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is one game where I liked both of them at different times. I very much liked how the mClassic-only upscale made the pre-rendered videos look, but in-game, the more muted colors didn’t complement the game since its colors are already quite muted. For the most part, then, I preferred the Portta 720p + mClassic for this one.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
It was when I started testing the Wii version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess that I began to realize that the weird black pixels I was seeing weren’t a product of my imagination. It seems that my Wii was damaged when I moved a few months ago, though only some effects cause the garbage pixels. It could die tomorrow or live forever as a quirky console that spits out irreverent pixels apropos of nothing. So if you notice weird black pixels where there shouldn’t be weird black pixels, that’s what it is. It only shows up in the Wii titles, so it’ll disappear toward the end when I test a few of my Gamecube games (back-compat).
Twilight Princess is another game with a muted color scheme, but I think that the mClassic-only upscale wins this one. Just look at the comparison shots of the bridge that I included at the end of the video. The smoothness of the mClassic-only upscale adds a lot to the overall look because the aliasing is distracting.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Colorful games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl tend to match well with the more muted mClassic-only upscale, not that there’s anything wrong with throwing the Portta into the mix. It can become a little too vivid, though, which you can see in the comparison shot of the title screen. The mClassic upscale looks neutral, while the Portta ones add so much color that it starts to look messy. 2D art looks especially good in the mClassic-only upscale, too, so games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl that use lots of text and 2D icons benefit since it’s all smoothed over at the same time, helping to tie the whole image together.
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
Apparently, the Wii version of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is totally different than the one the other platforms received. I’ve heard it’s the superior version, but I haven’t played enough of either to weigh in. I do know, however, that the Prince of Persia games are meant to be vivid and colorful, so I ended up preferring the Portta 720 to mClassic upscale on this one. The genie looks a little too bright, but I prefer that to the entire color scheme looking dull. The mClassic-only upscale makes everything look too gray. It looks like The Sands of Time filtered through Warrior Within, which brings out the worst of both.
Wii Sports
I know that Wii Sports is a gimmick game, but damn does the bowling hold up. This one is pretty much a tie; the mClassic-only upscale is a little dull, but does wonders to murder the jaggies, while the Portta 720 + mClassic upscale looks truer to how I remember Wii Sports looking. At the end of the day, you’ll probably get too worked up trying to remember how you used to bowl 300 games regularly to pay any attention to how the image looks. I’d probably give a slight edge to the mClassic-only version, though, if only because the other minigames are much brighter and more colorful than the bowling one.
Bleach: Shattered Blade
There are a couple of Wii games that I own (or once owned and have since been looking to reacquire) solely because they can be used to build lean muscle. Bleach: Shattered Blade is a game that demands constant flailing, and even if you work out regularly, sticking with it will make you sore. This one is no contest; the brain expects character outlines to be smooth given the anime art style, and the Portta’s unflatteringly aliased look and oversaturated colors look awful compared to the mClassic-only processing.
SoulCalibur Legends
SoulCalibur Legends is a bad game and no one should ever play it. I tried and it broke me. Don’t make the same mistake I did. For this one, I found the mClassic-only upscale to be a little too blurry. The Portta 720p + mClassic upscale proved to be a nice balance between light antialiasing and vivid, interesting colors. Colors more interesting than the game itself. And that control scheme! Ugh. This game is a nightmare.
Sonic Unleashed
Speaking of nightmares, I also own Sonic Unleashed. It’s pretty rare for a 3D Sonic game from this era to end up on a list and not be the worst game present, but even Sonic Unleashed‘s cringe-inducing characters and voice acting and story are excellent compared to the above train wreck. Now, Sonic games are colorful, but I actually ended up preferring the Portta 720p + mClassic upscale here. The mClassic-only one was a little too blurry, and the extra color helps Sonic to pop out from the background a bit during stages.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
New Super Mario Bros. Wii (I hate that name and the 2D Mario series’ naming conventions as a whole) is a colorful game just like Sonic, and I ended up liking the more colorful Portta 720p + mClassic upscale for many of the same reasons as Sonic Unleashed. The mClassic-only upscale looks a little too washed out.
Need For Speed: Carbon
I remember thinking that the Wii version of Need For Speed: Carbon had fun and natural Wiimote-tilting steering controls. This had to have been during a period of heavy drinking because steering in this game is like steering by lightly singing relaxing Enya songs to a sleepy driver from the passenger seat. This is a convincing win for the mClassic-only upscale, though. The darker image could potentially become a minor liability on some of the darker courses (though I suppose you could just turn the brightness up on your TV if that ever becomes an actual issue), but the antialiasing looks great, and there are enough pre-rendered videos in this game to make the mClassic’s talent for hiding compression artifacts a big point in its favor.
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
These last three games are Gamecube games that I’m playing on the Wii using its backward compatibility. There are apparently ways to get great-looking video out of the Gamecube, but those have always seemed like a hassle compared to popping a disc into the Wii and playing with component cables at an easy 480p.
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is another tie between the mClassic-only upscale and the Portta 720 + mClassic upscale. It’s a more colorful game than Radiant Dawn, but during gameplay I definitely prefer the colors of the Portta 720 version. At base camp, doling out bonus experience to units, though? That’s where I felt that the mClassic-only upscale really stood out. Just look at that screenshot of Mia leveling up. The whole image comes together nicely, and the lines are smoothed out in a really incredible way.
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime is an easy win for the mClassic-only upscale. It’s not even a contest—games with lots of diagonal lines will throw a whole lot of aliasing into your face, and the mClassic smooths this out in an incredible way. Metroid Prime was one of the few games that have ever made a console generation seem like a true jump in graphical quality, and the mClassic upscale is even better than I remembered it looking through nostalgia goggles. It even reduces shimmers and HUD aliasing to make the game more readable.
Super Mario Suckfest
Every night, I look at myself in the mirror and whisper, “Super Mario Sunshine can’t hurt you anymore.” I was wrong; somehow, I managed to record the Portta 1080p + mClassic version twice, so there’s no 720p + mClassic in the above video. It says there is, but it’s mislabeled because I was rushing. Thankfully, I caught it before rendering the combination of all of these clips—a five-hour video—for the Youtube channel I sometimes upload content to, so I was able to record a real Portta 720p + mClassic comparison and splice that in, but the above video was uploaded before I caught the error. So if you want to see what 720 looks like, you’ll have to wait a week or so for that full video with the fix to process. I’m not joking. It’s a 35 gigabyte file at 4K. Uploading 20 gigs at 4K took something like 4-5 days, so a week seems realistic.
Super Mario Sunshine is headache-inducingly bright, so the mClassic-only upscale’s darkening ends up being a big relief. This Mario game also includes a disgusting amount of pre-rendered video with ugly compression artifacts, so that’s another reason the mClassic-only upscale is the winner of this one. And now, having declared that, I can go back to pretending that Super Mario Sunshine doesn’t exist and the series jumped from Super Mario 64 to Super Mario Odyssey. Sunshine? Galaxy? Never heard of ’em.
So is the mClassic worth it for Wii games?
Obviously, it is. I mean, I tested 13 games across two console generations and a bunch of genres and preferred a version that made use of the mClassic’s upscale in all 13 of them. If you go hard into Nintendo Wii games (or Gamecube games that you play on a Wii) and are looking to carpet bomb the jaggies while giving the image a warm and fuzzy analog look on a modern TV, then I’d say that it’s worth the price to buy a cheap component to HDMI converter and an mClassic. This thing is a nostalgia filter. The price of the mClassic is high enough that people who don’t do much gaming might not be able to justify the purchase, but if you love older consoles that can display in 480p (again, this does nothing for 480i content) or have a whole bunch of consoles that you could use it on, then the price starts to look much more reasonable.
The Nintendo Wii and mClassic sitting in a tree, a-n-t-i-aliasing first appeared on Killa Penguin
