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The Wii U could run Wii games thanks to dedicated chips on the MoBo. That's why it has to switch into Wii mode. Most Nintendo backwards compatibility depends on
by lapetitejort 4y ago
The Wii U could run Wii games thanks to dedicated chips on the MoBo. That's why it has to switch into Wii mode. Most Nintendo backwards compatibility depends on dedicated hardware to operate. Wii and GameCube are the exception. The Super Nintendo was going to be backwards compatible with the NES but Nintendo found it too expensive.
- fredoralive 4y agoPedantically, I'm not sure if there are any extra physical chips on the Wii U for backwards compatibility, at least for the major bits. On the CPU side, the Wii U uses a weird triple core PowerPC 750 (aka G3) setup, even though the 750 was a) ancient and b) not designed for SMP, in order that it could be used for backwards compatibility with the previous 750 powered units. On the GPU side it does still have the old GC / Wii "GX" GPU as a separate unit, but it's just on the same chip as the modern GPU.