I dug out Rogue Squadron II and III for Gamecube the other day for some nostalgia; I expected them not to hold up to my memories of them, but instead I was absolutely flooredby how well their graphics stand up today. Bumpmapping on almost everything, self-shadowing, gorgeous lighting...

Then it occurred to me; I can't think of a single Wii game that pushes this many visual effects. Factor 5 had some serious tricks when it came to the Gamecube/Wii hardware, and I honestly don't think any other developer managed to surpass them, even with the Wii's 50% increase in CPU/GPU speed and more than twofold RAM increase.

It's tragic then that Factor 5 went under before they could show us what the Wii could really do.

Thoughts?

While I personally think that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is graphically better than the Rogue Squadron games, it doesn't push the Wii to the same degree that Factor 5 did with the GC.

The Wii has many games which IMO are above those founds on PS2/GC/Xbox (Galaxy 2, Monster Hunter 3, The Last Story, Metroid Prime 3, Tales of Graces to name a few), however it doesn't have a graphical equivalent of Rogue Squadron 3.

I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU.

The most incredible thing is that it was a launch window game.

I think the Conduit did quite a lot of decent things graphically on the Wii, too bad the gameplay was just too mediocre. You could almost pass it as one of the earliest 360 games. That said I never had the gamecube so I can't make any comment on that.

Ah god don't start threads with good Star Wars videogames, it hurts so bad.

Also I remember Conduit 1 and 2 pushed the wii quite a bit in terms of graphics.

Tagging for epicness. Goes to show that if the will was there, some nice graphics could have been pulled off on the little Wii that could.

Ah, Factor 5 was one of a kind, and certainly did a great job with the RS games.

Perhaps the reason that not a whole lot of developers did the same with the Wii stems from the 'poor' third party support it has (had),eh?

I, for one, never thought The Conduit was never that good looking.  It had some nice effects going on, but IMO nothing that pushed it beyond the graphical bar already set by games like Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy.  However, artistically the game looked like shit IMO, one has to wonder if they even had a texture artist; the textures were just plain boring and uninspired, among the worst I've seen for a game that got a decent amount of media attention.

Conduit 1 & 2 scored in terms of effects, but not much else from my recollection.

woops, Mr T-Tar beat me to it. Good show

Conduit didn't even have true dynamic lighting and shadows, something many N64 shooters did have.

In my opinion, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid Prime 3, Monster Hunter Tri and Muramasa have the best graphics on the Wii.