Main Page

Welcome to the Console Research Wiki!

We are a wiki dedicated to the research and documentation of game console hardware and firmware from a historical perspective, primarily focused on Nintendo.

Est. 2018 | Thanks to our 292 contributors, we currently have 369 articles!

Featured article

The Wii Startup Disc is a disc which was used to install Wii Menu 1.0 on early-run Wii consoles (often referred to by the community as Startup Disc Wiis) which were produced before the menu was ready.

Most of these consoles were distributed as kiosk units in North America, where the disc would be loaded by a NoA representative who visited each store. However, a few Startup Disc Wiis were shipped in launch-day Wii retail boxes, with no accompanying disc - affected customers were required to send their units back to Nintendo.

Startup Disc Wiis came with a stub system menu (often referred to as the Startup Disc Menu, internally known as System Menu 0) designed only to load the Startup Disc, leaving these consoles unusable unless a Startup Disc can be inserted (or spoofed using a drivechip).

Public awareness of the Startup Disc dates back to mid-September 2006, when rumors began circulating about the disc, initially seen as something which would be included in all launch-day retail Wii boxes. Indeed, the initial revision of NA Wii boxes listed the Startup Disc in its contents section, in the slot which was later changed to 'Wii Sports Disc' (sometimes by pasting a sticker over the original label) - however, there are no reports of any of these boxes actually containing a Startup Disc.

(Read more...)

Did you know ...

...that Nintendo planned to partner with AOL for network services on the GameCube?
...piracy on the Wii started as early as February of 2007, with the WiiKey, Wiinja and CycloWiz modchips?
...there was an unreleased GBA peripheral that would allow online play and game downloads?
...the first prototype of the Famicom consisted of two huge boxes full of discrete logic?
...the Nintendo Switch started its life as a cancelled successor to the 3DS?

Highlighted sections

This month in history..

July 1983 - The Famicom is released in Japan.
July 1993 - An early prototype of the PlayStation 1 hardware is demonstrated to Namco.
July 1999 - The BS2 source tree is created.
July 2004 - Game Freak receives one of the earliest final Nintendo DS devkits.
July 2006 - The NDEV 2.1 is released.