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 '''Wii Fun Centre''' in the UK, 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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== 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.
  
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 the reminiscent 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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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 U version seemed to have the games pre-installed on the system without any different GUI, and the versions of the Fun Center for other consoles probably worked like a real system would, where you have to use cartridges or discs. If you wanted to add more games, you would have to purchase them on the Nintendo eShop as you would for a retail unit.
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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.
  
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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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).
  
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 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 didn't work like the US version, 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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== 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.
It is believed that the Fun Center worked 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.
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[[File:WiiFunCenterGUI.jpg|thumb|The Wii Fun Center GUI.]]
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.