Uploaded November 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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The Wii didn't really have a programmable pipeline (no programmable shaders).
Instead, it had something else called TEV (Texture Environment Unit).

The Wii U, on the other side, did have a programmable pipeline (you can program shaders for it) and TEV was dropped.

How does NSMBU look so similar to NSMBW if the Wii U no longer has the same system (TEV)?
Apparently, Nintendo made a TEV emulator through programmable shaders specifically for NSMBU! (lol)
Each model in the game (NSMBU) has the TEV emulator compiled with specific settings for that model as its shader.

Luckily for us, Nintendo screwed up and left the source code for the emulator in the game.
I finally found a way to compile it and use it for custom models, making this possible.

A comparison between a model using TEV and a model using a basic shader:
https://i.postimg.cc/fbrtLQ74/image.png