Sonic Unleashed HD on Wii U

[albinosjunior]

Since the Sonic Unleashed PC decompilation is out now, I wonder if it would be possible to make a Wii U version of the game since the Wii U is more powerful than PS3 and Xbox 360 ?
It would be really cool, and the new PC port could make things easier.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to port a PC game to the Wii U. Is there any way this could be possible ? And if so, what would be the easiest way to do it ?

 

[JohnMX]

I have a post on the same question, basically summing up, it is possible, someone just needs to do it, I even tried, but there isn't documentation on XenonRecomp, so I didn't know what I was doing

Post automatically merged: Mar 5, 2025

I just imagine how cool it would be to have the 2 different sonic unleashed versions on the same console

 

[Exnor]

The GPU on the WiiU was more powerfull and modern than the ones used for PS3 and xb360 but the CPU was, if I'm not mistaken, a lot less powerfull.

Possible? Well with time and skill I believe so, but not without a huge modification to the code, expecially the CPU part.

I don't think it can be made the same way the recompilation project is doing for x86. Then again I might be wrong

 

[ChibiMofo]

The CPU and GPU were more powerful, which is why the definitve console version of Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) is the Wii U version. Only it can use the PC's textures. Of course Sonic Unleashed can run on the Wii U. All wii need is for someone with crazy Wii U game dev skillz to recompile it and make a few changes that make sense in a Wii U world with GamePad.

Don't expect that to ever actually happen, however. Not a lot of Wii U game development is taking place anymore, including the homebrew scene. But there is no PS3 or X360 game that would run at least as good on a Wii U if properly ported. People who suggest otherwise have no clue.

 

[albarapa]

The only ones I know who are porting games to the Wii U are the Latte Team, so your best bet is to reach out to them directly.

 

[Moon164]

It would be amazing if that happened, but I think it would be as difficult (or even more difficult) than porting GTA 3 and Vice City to the Dreamcast, for example.

 

[N7Kopper]

The GPU on the WiiU was more powerfull and modern than the ones used for PS3 and xb360 but the CPU was, if I'm not mistaken, a lot less powerfull.

Possible? Well with time and skill I believe so, but not without a huge modification to the code, expecially the CPU part.

I don't think it can be made the same way the recompilation project is doing for x86. Then again I might be wrong

I believe the CPU isn't specifically less powerful, but rather it's downclocked for heat management reasons. It's an identical end result, though. More cores, but each core is less powerful individually.

 

[Exnor]

I believe the CPU isn't specifically less powerful, but rather it's downclocked for heat management reasons. It's an identical end result, though. More cores, but each core is less powerful individually.

The 3 core cpu on the Wii U is only capable of 3 hardware simultaneous threads while the 3 Core cpu of the 360 is capable of 6 hardware threads .

In terms of IPCs if i´m not mistaken the 360 one has a lot more performance, and almost a 3 times more clock rate.

The Wii U CPU benefits of being more modern and with some Power8 arch tech but in the end its not as performant as the 360 one.

The Ps3 CPU is another beast in itself lol. With 2 main cores an able to do up to 7 hardware threads (but not really, its a very interesting piece of tech but complicated) and also almost 3 times faster clock rate than the one on the Wii U.

Again i'm writing this using just what i remember, and i can be wrong.

 

[bfebkefwjwgwqjkwee]

There could be a decomp port, as SoH got added.

 

[CrazySquid]

Many things to say here. First... the decomp project only decompile to x86 platforms due to the intrinsics , so it will not work straight up with the Wii U since it's PPC.

Second, the generated code is not aimed to be human-readable. so it will be an even bigger pain in the ass to port it.

Third, on Wii U you have the GX2 API to learn in order to use this, so there is that too, if you want the best performance you will need to use the proprietary API (the SDK mentioned that it was based on OpenGL, but I don't remember how similar to it was). Anyway, XenosRecomp recompiles to HLSL, which can be used for Vulkan and DX, but neither works on the Wii U.

And finally, about the CPU, the Wii U CPU is overall more or less on par with the Xbox 360, perhaps slightly more powerful even, since it has a far better IPC, the logic processing of it is much better than X360 (which is the most important thing on a processor).

It's not exactly a PowerPC 750 because it has features that a PPC750 couldn't have (SMP support, 1GHz+ clock speeds...), but it's 100% binary compatible with it. The reason for the "slow" speed of the CPU is because it has a very short pipeline, but it's extremely efficient, if you have a cache miss, the penalty is lower thanks to the shorter pipeline, has FAR lower latency than the X360's CPU to memory, far more cache, OoOE, etc. It just sucks at floating point arithmetic, which many games on the 7th gen were optimized for, but it's better than the 360 at everything else.

It's a bit late here and I feel like I'm forgetting to write something, but eh, guess that's pretty much what I wanted to write.

 

[ertaboy356b]

Since the Sonic Unleashed PC decompilation is out now, I wonder if it would be possible to make a Wii U version of the game since the Wii U is more powerful than PS3 and Xbox 360 ?
It would be really cool, and the new PC port could make things easier.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to port a PC game to the Wii U. Is there any way this could be possible ? And if so, what would be the easiest way to do it ?

You can't (for now?). The recomp tool only works for X86. Wii U is using a PowerPC chip.

 

[dafnfandmario64]

Honestly for me, i wish a port of Project 06 was on Wii U.

 

[sonictopfan]

Honestly for me, i wish a port of Project 06 was on Wii U.

Why not both?
But a Sonic 2006 Recomp would be awsome, Sonic Free Riders and Sonic The Fighters too, do them all.

 

[ChronoCrossfangirl2002]

Honestly for me, i wish a port of Project 06 was on Wii U.

but it's not even finished yet

 

[Moonfire2560]

To be honest, you're asking for a miracle. If you want to consider any other platform, its more likely to see a switch port.

 

[MikaDubbz]

To be honest, you're asking for a miracle. If you want to consider any other platform, its more likely to see a switch port.

Eh, with these decomp projects it's not so much a miracle that you're asking for anymore as much as you're asking for someone to dedicate a lot of time and work on such a passion project. This isn't an impossibility at all, it is feasible. But I just doubt we'll see anything come of it, at least anytime soon.

I will be curious on where things stand in say 5 or so years in future. Won't be shocked to see a few 360 decomps make it to a hacked Wii U. Hell, we've seen a game released only for the Xbone and PS4 and Switch get successfully backported to the Wii U already in Sonic Mania. Granted it's way less of a taxing game, but still it helps keep perspective and possibilities open.

 

[Exnor]

Many things to say here. First... the decomp project only decompile to x86 platforms due to the intrinsics , so it will not work straight up with the Wii U since it's PPC.

Second, the generated code is not aimed to be human-readable. so it will be an even bigger pain in the ass to port it.

Third, on Wii U you have the GX2 API to learn in order to use this, so there is that too, if you want the best performance you will need to use the proprietary API (the SDK mentioned that it was based on OpenGL, but I don't remember how similar to it was). Anyway, XenosRecomp recompiles to HLSL, which can be used for Vulkan and DX, but neither works on the Wii U.

And finally, about the CPU, the Wii U CPU is overall more or less on par with the Xbox 360, perhaps slightly more powerful even, since it has a far better IPC, the logic processing of it is much better than X360 (which is the most important thing on a processor).

It's not exactly a PowerPC 750 because it has features that a PPC750 couldn't have (SMP support, 1GHz+ clock speeds...), but it's 100% binary compatible with it. The reason for the "slow" speed of the CPU is because it has a very short pipeline, but it's extremely efficient, if you have a cache miss, the penalty is lower thanks to the shorter pipeline, has FAR lower latency than the X360's CPU to memory, far more cache, OoOE, etc. It just sucks at floating point arithmetic, which many games on the 7th gen were optimized for, but it's better than the 360 at everything else.

It's a bit late here and I feel like I'm forgetting to write something, but eh, guess that's pretty much what I wanted to write.

Best answer so far.

 

[BeanMKW]

Eh, with these decomp projects it's not so much a miracle that you're asking for anymore as much as you're asking for someone to dedicate a lot of time and work on such a passion project. This isn't an impossibility at all, it is feasible. But I just doubt we'll see anything come of it, at least anytime soon.

I will be curious on where things stand in say 5 or so years in future. Won't be shocked to see a few 360 decomps make it to a hacked Wii U. Hell, we've seen a game released only for the Xbone and PS4 and Switch get successfully backported to the Wii U already in Sonic Mania. Granted it's way less of a taxing game, but still it helps keep perspective and possibilities open.

You could say the possibilities are.. never ending.

 

[SolidSonicTH]

The CPU and GPU were more powerful, which is why the definitve console version of Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) is the Wii U version. Only it can use the PC's textures. Of course Sonic Unleashed can run on the Wii U. All wii need is for someone with crazy Wii U game dev skillz to recompile it and make a few changes that make sense in a Wii U world with GamePad.

Don't expect that to ever actually happen, however. Not a lot of Wii U game development is taking place anymore, including the homebrew scene. But there is no PS3 or X360 game that would run at least as good on a Wii U if properly ported. People who suggest otherwise have no clue.

I think the Wii U also has more memory, which is why Tekken Tag 2 can have background characters in online matches when the PS3 and 360 versions could not.

EDIT: Yeah, it's got a crapton more. 2GB vs. 256MB (PS3)/512MB (Xbox 360). It's faster too (since when those consoles released DDR3 wasn't cheap enough). It's better on every metric except maybe for distributed compute (the Cell architecture was probably more attuned for simultaneous threading).

 

[Moon164]

It would be very interesting to see a Wii U port happen, but it could also be a disaster.

The Wii U has more than enough RAM (the PS3 and Xbox 360 both have 512 MB of RAM total, while the Wii U has 2 GB) and a more powerful GPU, but it falls short when it comes to the CPU.

And if I'm not mistaken, Sonic Unleashed is a game that is quite CPU-limited on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

A good example of this is that even with a GPU overclock on the PS3, you barely get a performance boost in areas like the Empire City HUB:



On the other hand, in cutscenes you actually get a good performance gain if you overclock the GPU: