A controversial release – even at launch – The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword first released on Wii, arriving at the tail-end of the firm’s contentious motion control period. Many believed the game was stuck in the past, a derivative of the Ocarina of Time formula, and the new waggle controls failed to push the series forward. 10 years on, Skyward Sword HD is an opportunity to re-evaluate the game – and for me at least, it has finally clicked. The graphics are improved but really, it’s the quality of life improvements that strip out the frustrations and frictions with the original game, letting the core design shine.
In bringing Skyward Sword to the Switch, Nintendo has opted to maintain the look and feel of the original game while introducing visual tweaks and changes where it makes sense. Some assets have been re-worked, the entire UI is new and image quality is hugely improved. On Wii, Skyward Sword is limited by its 480p output and reduced colour depth, leading to obvious dithering artefacts throughout. For Switch, we’re running at a fixed 1080p resolution (720p while docked) with a virtually flawless 60fps performance level, marred only by heavy alpha effects – explosions and particles – that only present very rarely.
The Wii’s colour dithering is eliminated entirely and overall image quality is hugely improved. Anti-aliasing is not used, however, but due to the nature of the texture work, shimmering is kept to a minimum. It’s not a cutting-edge game but it looks visually pleasing. And here’s where things get interesting: Switch tinkerer OatmealDome and others have been examining the game closely and it turns out, there are some neat techniques in play here. Specifically, Nintendo seems to have developed a plug-in that translates the Wii’s GX Graphics API calls, mapping them to the new NVN API on Switch. Clearly the idea here is to accurately simulate the visual effects created for the original game – and I feel they’ve succeeded.
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