Difference between revisions of "Starlight Fun Center"

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[[File:WiiFunCenter.jpg|thumb|The Wii Fun Center.]]
 
[[File:WiiFunCenter.jpg|thumb|The Wii Fun Center.]]
[[File:WiiFunCentre.jpg|thumb|The Wii Fun Centre, the UK counterpart system.]]
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[[File:WiiFunCentre.jpg|thumb|The Wii Fun Centre, the UK counterpart system.]]The '''Starlight Fun Center'''s (Fun Centres in the UK) are a series of units made by the Starlight Children's Foundation in cooperation with Nintendo to distribute Nintendo game consoles for use in hospitals. Starlight units exist for Nintendo consoles from the SNES to the Nintendo Switch, although most of these are simply retail consoles in a special case with a TV attached; the Wii Fun Center is unique for using a special Wii console with a hard drive in place of an optical disc drive (similar to the [[RVT-H Reader]]), as well as using a special game loading menu.
[[File:WiiFunCenterGUI.jpg|thumb|The Wii Fun Center GUI.]]
 
  
The '''Starlight Fun Center''', known as the '''Fun Centre''' in the UK, is a series of units made by the Starlight Children's Foundation and Nintendo to bring their consoles to hospitals. The Wii version consists of the Wii console, TV, and DVD player that can be transported easily through the hospital grounds. SNES, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii and Wii U versions have been made.
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== Wii Fun Center ==
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The Wii Starlight unit is based on an [[RVT-R Reader]], with the disc drive replaced with a drive emulator board which connects to an IDE hard drive and loads games from it. This drive has an ATA password set and is encrypted (an encryption chip on the emulator board is used to decrypt it), while the drive emulator board handles the logic of translating the Wii's disc requests into reads to the hard drive, as well as the decryption logic. The board also includes a "dev port" for updating the data on the hard drive.
  
Starlight is a nonprofit organization, and relied on donations to bring the Fun Centers in hospitals. The unit is intended to make a kid's hospital visit more fun, distracting the kid from the pain, worry and boredom that a hospital visit can give. Also, Nintendo has partnered up with the company to do things like making Mario-themed hospital gowns.
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Notably, the drive emulator board will not function unless the 'controller select board' is connected; this is a board which handles the selection of different controller peripherals via the switch on the front of the kiosk.
  
Perhaps the most interesting Fun Center is the Nintendo Wii version. It was released on June 25, 2008. actually runs on development Wii hardware. You load games onto it and they are displayed in a coverflow GUI, which is comparable to ones found in USB Loaders for modded Wiis, especially WiiFlow. In order to get games loaded on it, you have to call Nintendo's Fun Center hotline and use a download manager to download them. This system appears to use hardware similar to what is found in a [[RVT-H Reader]], but with a completely different and patented system for selecting and loading games.
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The Wii Fun Center includes a unique game selection menu program, which is loaded from the hard drive; as described in the patent for the Starlight Fun Center<ref>https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100160048A1/en?oq=US2010%2f0160048</ref>, this program sends commands to the drive to switch between banks (similar to what is present on the [[RVT-H Reader]]) and load different games.
  
The Wii U version works very similarly to how a retail Wii U unit works, and may even use a standard retail Wii U unit (although this is unconfirmed) - the games are stored on an external USB hard drive, and new games are simply purchased from the [[Nintendo eShop]].
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The system boots initially using a modified version of the [[NDEV Menu]] based on version 1.10 (which is also found on the [[RVT-R Reader]] PP4 unit).
  
An interesting note about the Wii Fun Center is that a possible system error message is "Insert disk Please insert disk", and if this message occurs the owner is instructed to repair the system. This is an [[NDEV Menu]] error message displayed when there is no inserted disk (real or emulated). This indicates that the NDEV Menu is ran silently during the Wii Fun Centre's boot process, before launching the main Fun Centre menu.
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== Other Fun Centers ==
 
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The Wii U and Switch Fun Center units are retail consoles, loading games from USB and the microSD card respectively.
The Wii Fun Centre (UK version of the Fun Center) has an "HD TV, Blu-ray player, a Nintendo Wii with four Wii Remotes, Wii Nunchuk and Wii Wheels, a Wii Balance Board, four Nintendo DSi consoles and a library of films and games". Thus, it is the ultimate version. This version of the Fun Center likely doesn't work like the US version does, instead using actual discs on a retail system. It was released in March 2011, right around the time the 3DS released. [https://web.archive.org/web/20140722194348/http://www.starlight.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Starlight_Fun_Centre.mp4 A video explaining this version can be found here].
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[[File:WiiFunCenterGUI.jpg|thumb|The Wii Fun Center GUI.]]
It is believed that the Fun Center works through a similar system to the [[RVT-H Reader]], by first loading the menu and a game listing off of the first hard drive bank then swapping to subsequent banks containing different games on user request.
 
 
 
The Fun Center firmware or hard drive contents have not been dumped, and it is one of our [[Holy Grails]].
 
 
 
==Games Included==
 
 
 
Here are some games included on the Fun Center, depending on the version of it.
 
 
 
* Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
 
* Boom Blox
 
* Carnival Games
 
* Cars Mater-National
 
* Disney Epic Mickey
 
* Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey
 
* Donkey Kong Country Returns
 
* Elebits
 
* Excite Truck
 
* Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
 
* Go Vacation
 
* Grand Slam Tennis
 
* Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour
 
* Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
 
* Just Dance Kids 2
 
* Kirby's Epic Yarn
 
* Kung Fu Panda: Legendary Warriors
 
* The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
 
* LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
 
* Madden NFL '08
 
* Madden NFL '10
 
* Mario Kart Wii
 
* Mario Party 8
 
* Mario Party 9
 
* Mario Power Tennis
 
* Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games
 
* Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
 
* Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games
 
* Mario Sports Mix
 
* Mario Strikers Charged
 
* Mario Super Sluggers
 
* Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
 
* MySims Party
 
* NBA Jam
 
* NBA Live 08
 
* Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots
 
* New Super Mario Bros. Wii
 
* Pikmin
 
* PokéPark 2: Wonders Beyond
 
* PokéPark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure
 
* Ratatouille
 
* Rayman Raving Rabbids
 
* Shaun White Skateboarding
 
* Shrek the Third
 
* Surf's Up
 
* Super Mario Galaxy
 
* Super Paper Mario
 
* Toy Story 3
 
* Wii Party
 
* Wii Play
 
* Wii Sports
 
* Wii Sports Resort
 
* Wii Music
 
* Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
 
  
 
{{Template:WiiNavbox}}
 
{{Template:WiiNavbox}}
  
 
[[Category:Wii]]
 
[[Category:Wii]]

Latest revision as of 00:30, 27 March 2022

The Wii Fun Center.
The Wii Fun Centre, the UK counterpart system.

The Starlight Fun Centers (Fun Centres in the UK) are a series of units made by the Starlight Children's Foundation in cooperation with Nintendo to distribute Nintendo game consoles for use in hospitals. Starlight units exist for Nintendo consoles from the SNES to the Nintendo Switch, although most of these are simply retail consoles in a special case with a TV attached; the Wii Fun Center is unique for using a special Wii console with a hard drive in place of an optical disc drive (similar to the RVT-H Reader), as well as using a special game loading menu.

Wii Fun Center

The Wii Starlight unit is based on an RVT-R Reader, with the disc drive replaced with a drive emulator board which connects to an IDE hard drive and loads games from it. This drive has an ATA password set and is encrypted (an encryption chip on the emulator board is used to decrypt it), while the drive emulator board handles the logic of translating the Wii's disc requests into reads to the hard drive, as well as the decryption logic. The board also includes a "dev port" for updating the data on the hard drive.

Notably, the drive emulator board will not function unless the 'controller select board' is connected; this is a board which handles the selection of different controller peripherals via the switch on the front of the kiosk.

The Wii Fun Center includes a unique game selection menu program, which is loaded from the hard drive; as described in the patent for the Starlight Fun Center[1], this program sends commands to the drive to switch between banks (similar to what is present on the RVT-H Reader) and load different games.

The system boots initially using a modified version of the NDEV Menu based on version 1.10 (which is also found on the RVT-R Reader PP4 unit).

Other Fun Centers

The Wii U and Switch Fun Center units are retail consoles, loading games from USB and the microSD card respectively.

The Wii Fun Center GUI.