Again, with the game running at only 480p, there's no need for high-res textures.  You wouldn't be able to see all the extra pixels anyway.

Everyone seems to be underestimating what the Wii can do. In Super Mario Galaxy, you can literally see a planetoid flying towards you at full 60 FPS with the detail and bump mapping intact. Northing in Portal or Half Life 2 has approached that level of complexity for me yet, granted haven't played Episode 1, 2 and Team Fortress yet. Hell, the Gamecube was able to render levels a mile across in Super Mario Sunshine, and the Wii has another one of them duct taped together to the one most third party developers seem to know how to use.

I bet the two source engine games I have played are easily possible with the Wii.

@Entroper: Well yeah, that's another thing to consider for Wii ports and that many people seem to forget. A game like Portal doesn't has super-high res textures, even on the final levels AND even when set on high. So at medium+480p wouldn't make much of a difference. (Kinda off topic: I know you are a programmer... have you worked on the Wii yet? Any word on the GPU architecture?)

Also check this comparison screenshots for the settings on HL2.

Model detail:

http://www.tweakguides.com/images/HL2_7a.jpg  vs http://www.tweakguides.com/images/HL2_7c.jpg

Shader detail:

http://www.tweakguides.com/images/HL2_8a.jpg vs http://www.tweakguides.com/images/HL2_8b.jpg

Texture detail:

http://www.tweakguides.com/images/HL2_Textures.gif (1MB .gif file) (I'm the only one that thinks that @low the texture look like SMG's? Heh)

HDR: 

http://www.tweakguides.com/images/HL2_10a.jpg vs http://www.tweakguides.com/images/HL2_10b.jpg vs http://www.tweakguides.com/images/HL2_10c.jpg

As you can see, the Source engine is a very scalable one.

Great. Now I'm stuck in a quandary.

On one side, this looks like my laptop should be able to handle it, on the other hand, it looks like it would totally work on the Wii, and I feel bad about that, cause I really like the control setup that I came up with... I hate using keyboard and mouse for games.

What is the current control scheme for Portal anyway?

Unfortunately I've only had the opportunity to work on the PS3, and that was more for a research project than anything involving games (kind of an interesting commentary on the PS3... but that's way off topic). Wii dev kits are really cheap though, and I would like to try my hand at being a WiiWare developer at some point. Of course if that ever happens, and I break the nondisclosure agreement, I'm sure Nintendo will own my soul...

I wonder how many souls currently populate the ranks of their accursed demon army.  It must be a substantial figure.

Come to think of it, it's OK.  I've gotten good enough at GH3 that I can beat Lou on Expert more than half the time.  I'll win my soul back.  :)