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. The girl on the left is not included.]]
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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.]]
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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.
  
The Fun Center was a contraption made by the Starlight Children's Foundation and Nintendo to bring their consoles to hospitals. It consists of a 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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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 GUI, which can be considered watered down compared to USB Loaders, especially WiiFlow. In order to get games loaded on it, you had to call Nintendo's Fun Center hotline and use a Windows download manager to download them.
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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 seemed to have the games pre-installed on the system without any different GUI, and the other versions probably worked like a real system would, where you have to use cartridges or discs.
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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 was "Please insert disk", and if this message occurred the owner was instructed to repair the system. This is an [[NDEV Menu]] error message displayed when there is no inserted disk (real or emulated).
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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.
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[[File:WiiFunCenterGUI.jpg|thumb|The Wii Fun Center GUI.]]
  
The Wii Fun Centre (UK version of the Fun Center) had an "HD TV, Blu-ray player, a Nintendo Wii with four Wii Remotes, Wii Nunchuk and Wii Wheels, a Balance Board, four Nintendo DSi consoles and a library of films and games". Thus, it is the ultimate version, especially because it came with 4 DSis. It was released in March 2011, right around the release time of the 3DS.
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{{Template:WiiNavbox}}
  
We don't have the firmware or much internal info on how the Wii Fun Center worked. Because of that, it's one of our [[Holy Grails]].
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[[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.