Two generations two or three times removed; the N64 gives that game a run for its money.

Well, there are always games behind the curve.  That Wii GT game that looks a bit like GT on PS1 runs at 4 times the resolution, has more geometry & newer texture filtering.  The flat look was because of toon shading, I also think it ran at 60fps, but it was a Cube port from Japan anyways so you need to also remember that.

It bugs me when people overstate how bad the Wii looked.  That said I approve of this thread for humors sake.

There are N64 games that beat it handily:

For the record, this thread wasn't intended to badmouth the Wii. The Wii was my favourite 7th gen console, and as I said in the OP, it had many great looking games.

This is more a look at how poorly some devs used the hardware than an atack on the hardware itself.

Yeah but if someone wants to play PS1,N64 etc games he just plays them and don't buys a NEXTGEN Console(at that time) for that.I mean i played Syphon Filter a few days ago and i nearly started to puke but i don't expect it to look like a game from 2005 on a console from 2005.I expect a bad looking PS1 Action Game on an old console.
I can be wrong but didn't the 360 get released 1 year before the Wii?
What the heck?On one side you have decent looking 3rd Party party games where you actually could justify the switch over to that console while on the other side you have a game that looks worse than/on par with Gran Turismo 1 from the PS1.
And it looks like Nintendo is doing the same mistake again  while of course Last Gen low budget games actually don't look like PS1 games this time(at least they shouldn't)

Im still surprised that High Voltage Software really pushed the Wii hardware. It will be interesting to see what they will put out on the Wii U.

The PS1-looking games on Wii are the fault of lazy and/or incompetent developers, not the system, which proved iself capable of making good looking games in the right hands.

A game like The Conduit actually had really good graphics "for the Wii", that custom engine they built really did accomplish some things graphically that some folks said couldn't be done with Wii hardware. The problem was that the art direction wasn't as elaborate or creative as it could have been. And that isn't to same some areas didn't still look great, they did. It's just that other areas, while graphically good, were also bland too. The Conduit was a perfect example of a game that at least showed a lot of potential, especially in it's NON-space-marine-shooting-stuff storyline. But then the sequel completely shit itself because High Voltage threw their hands up and tried to MAKE it more of a generic space marine shooter. In fact they changed the whole style and tone of the series. That AND the graphics were in some ways worse.....really a case of not taking advantage, at all.

Agreed.

Art direction and consistency let the Conduit games down visually, despite their technical impressiveness.

One minute it looks like this:

The next it looks like this:

What compounded the problem was that, like everything else, the graphics went two steps forward, two steps back with the sequel; the art direction improved, and we got some pleasing locations like China, but the first game's smooth framerate was comprised, with the second having much more choppiness.