Starlight Fun Center
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The Starlight Fun Center, known as the Fun Centre in the UK, is a contraption 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.
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 and worry that a hospital visit can give. Also, Nintendo has partnered up with the company to do things like making Mario-themed hospital gowns.
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.
The Wii U version seem to have the games pre-installed on the system without any different GUI, and the versions of the Fun Center for other consoles probably work like a real system would, where you have to use cartridges or discs. If you want to add more games on the Wii U version, you have to purchase them on the Nintendo eShop as you would for a retail 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).
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. A video explaining this version can be found here.
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
