Nvidia Shield TV shows up in China with remastered Wii games

Nintendo relied heavily on Nvidia for the creation of the massively successful Nintendo Switch, but now it looks like that partnership extends beyond just hardware for the two companies. The Nvidia Shield TV has debuted in China featuring a selection of Wii and GameCube games that have never been available outside of Nintendo’s own hardware.

Chinese Shield TV owners can now play New Super Mario Bros. Wii, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Punch-Out! starting today, while games like Super Mario Galaxy are expected to debut at a later date. Every one of these games has been remastered to take advantage of 1080p resolution and they’ll be available for about $10 USD (68 yuan).

This is good news for Switch owners too, since the reveal of these games on the Nvidia Shield TV suggests that Nintendo could plan to bring them to the Switch at a later date. Both the Nvidia Shield TV and the Nintendo Switch utilize Nvidia’s Tegra X1, so this could be an early peek at Nintendo’s plans for a virtual console on its latest hardware.

So far, these games are only available to Chinese players and there’s no indication that they’ll be available anywhere else.