f13.net

I have a 1080p LED TV, 16:9, if that makes a difference. 480i rather than 480p, guessing I should buy the cables for that. But that can't be the whole difference, can it?

If I have a pretty good modern PC that's hooked up to my TV with HDMI, will games actually look better if I download Dolphin and run that? Can I use the Wiimote with my PC somehow, or would I have to buy an imitation wiimote controller?

tyty

It'll run and look much better on Dolphin; IIRC you just need some kind of bluetooth dongle to sync your Wiimote but I never bothered (I only used it for Xenoblade which didn't require any waggle so my PS3 controller worked fine). Wii games just natively look like shit on the system.

Did you get a Wii U or just a Wii?  The Wii can only do 480 with the comp. cable.  Wii U comes with HDMI.

Wii, and it looks far worse than any Wii I've ever played

Out of curiosity, What are you using to sync your ps3 remote to the PC? 

I just plug it in with the USB charging cable; I'm using the Motion Joy driver for it and prefer using the PS3 controller to any other for the PC.

Have you played other Wii games on the same TV?  And you are using the component cable (RGB) and not the regular video cable (yellow)?  There is little you can do to make a Wii game look better/worse within a given system.  Unless something is just wrong, but that can be checked by loading a different game.

Just hopping in to say I recently plugged my Wii in using component at 480p on a 1080p TV and it looked like total dogshit. That system did not age gracefully.

Once you get so used to 720p or 1080p content, going back and loading up a Wii game is jarring as hell, so I suspect that is what is happening here.  That said, Skyward Sword isn't exactly a terrible looking game (though I thought Twilight Princess looked nicer), so I suppose something else could also be going on.

In my experience games on the Wii simply aren't as sharp as the Game Cube. In fact, the Wii may be the worst looking system since the N64 or PS1 (those are a goddamn tossup, and were positively crushed by the Dreamcast).

I'll agree with that. The Wii never had decent AA, a fact that Dolphin made really obvious.

What kind of cables are you using? You should use component.

The Wii won't look great on a big HDTV though, no matter what you do.

FIFY.

Use Dolphin.  I believe that the hardest part is obtaining the ISO files.

Have ordered a bluetooth 4.0 thingamabobber. I'm not far into Skyward　Sword yet, so not too soon to switch to Dolphin, I suppose...

The second hardest part about Dolphin is finding a suitable button map for your no-doubt-normal controller.  Or using a real Wiimote, I guess.

Dolphin with a proper WiiMote is a pretty good experience.  The problem is that Nintendo used a special DVD format that only rips in a handful of drives.  You'll have to get the iso's for games you already own from other places.  The problem is that Nintendo is VERY good at policing their IP and tracking them down is actually pretty tough.

Um, really? I haven't messed with Dolphin in a while, but a quick search at, uh, the usual suspect had quite a few hits for big name Nintendo titles.

I try to avoid that *big* site as the way that protocol is designed its pretty difficult to be anonymous.  The method I prefer tends to give me lots of hits to dead files that have been DMCA'd down.  I did eventually manage to get digital copies of all the games I own.