Nintendo Wii starlight Children's Foundation Fun Center hospital kiosk

[ZED | 14]

Hey, I'm new to the forum and just thought I would share the largest item in my collection. I think it is pretty rare as I can hardly find any info on it online.

It is an old Kiosk originally made to be sold to Children's hospitals around the country. Has anyone seen these in Canada?

The one I have has a few cosmetic blemishes but it still works. It has a Wii locked inside with a hard drive that has some games pre-loaded. There is no standard menu screen like you've seen on a home Wii console. These were also made with a single DIN DVD player on the right side. You would normally have a few discs that can be reached through the hole in the front. You can insert movies into the player but can not get the DVD out of the unit.

Controllers are attached to the kiosk similar to how game store demo units were done.

It looks like this one was released in 2007 as a couple of the sports games are titled for 2008.

 

 

 

[croagunk | 798]

Cool! Never seen one of these before!

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

I haven't seen them in person, but I know of them, these Starlight kiosks. I know there's an N64 Starlight kiosk, and... I want to say there's a Gamecube one as well, but I could be misremembering, and probably a few other consoles as well. I don't see them pop up for sale very often at all, but I know they exist. Very cool to see a Wii one! I actually have an N64 cartridge that was originally used in one of these Starlight kiosks, sort of a quasi Not For Resale.

[drxandy | 3,225]

Super cool to see it running that interface for loading games from the hard drive. 

[Mega Tank | 955]

37 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

I want to say there's a Gamecube one as well,

There is. I was able to use one during a hospital stay. These Starlight Kiosks are amazing and do bring kids some joy in a time of uncertainty. They have also partnered up again to roll out the Nintendo Switch.

I really wonder what hospitals do with these after several years. It would be nice to see some of these older systems rolling around hospitals.

[ZED | 14]

4 hours ago, Mega Tank said:

I really wonder what hospitals do with these after several years. It would be nice to see some of these older systems rolling around hospitals.

Hospitals usually treat them like old computer equipment. They have a company that regularly picks up and recycles computers just take these kiosks to dispose of them.

Because of this, it is likely that 95% of them just get pulled apart and the components recycled.

I saw a Nintendo Wii U kiosk at a hospital a couple years ago. I did not take note of what brand it was. Like someone else said, there is also a new Switch kiosk announced but I don't think that unit has been delivered yet.

[Shawn | 31]

I'm pretty sure the CHEO in Eastern Ontario had one.

[Jfreakofkorn | 282]

 

[ZED | 14]

I plan to open it up and do some minor repairs and cleanup. I can post more pictures as I go along.

[Awoken | 275]

3 hours ago, ZED said:

I plan to open it up and do some minor repairs and cleanup. I can post more pictures as I go along.

That would be awesome!

[DarkTone | 984]

Thanks for sharing. 

[Code Monkey | 2,005]

My fiance is a doctor, need to see if she can get me one. Anyone know if these were ever in Canada?

[Shabby Road | 2]

I have seen one of these in Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario. There was a Wii U one there too.

[ZED | 14]

I started working on opening this up. I wanted to see if I could get into the main compartment where the console is.
On one side there is a single DIN DVD player like what you might install in a RV that would have a separate LCD television.
I could reach in there front the front with a long socket extension and removed the lock from the inside.

Once the back security door was open, someone is able to change out the DVD discs that can be stashed on that round plastic peg. There isn't much else to see in the back once that door is open.

On the bottom I noticed two external ports. One for network and the other is USB. I wonder if Starlight could update and install games using the USB port.

 

 

[Jfreakofkorn | 282]

Oh cool

[ZED | 14]

I dug in a little further. I unbolted the back panel and then removed the other lock. Inside you can see the back of the DVD player sending composite video to the TV. The Wii itself has a component cable going to the TV.

The Wii has a green plastic panel that blocks where a CD drive would normally go. This console should have a hard drive inside which holds the games locally. It has a bluetooth wired connection and the colored cables go to the two controllers.

A Wii lan adapter connects to the external RJ45 port on the kiosk.

The main problem I saw with this was the protective glass in front of the TV was starting to fall down. I unbolted the metal frame around the TV, replaced the double-back tape for the glass, and also added some Gorilla tape around the outside for some extra hold. It should be better than new now.

 

[ZED | 14]

Glass panel off. And final repair done.

I also found a PDF of instructions for using this system.

Wii_Starlight_Gaming_station_Operations_Manual.pdf

[Awoken | 275]

That`s awesome!

Thanks for sharing this, any chance you`re going to open the console itself? I would love to see the insides.

[Pikkon | 19]

Awesome you showed the console,don't think I have ever seen it before.

The starlight Wii very much resembles the Wii RVT-H as its a debug kit with a hdd built in,no disc drive.

[drxandy | 3,225]

Great pics!! Thanks for sharing, so coooooool!!

[Jfreakofkorn | 282]

Looks like something i posted a while back . . . 

[Awoken | 275]

Being triggered by this thread and being a big lover of all weird variants of consoles I did some searching and I found some pictures of the inside of the console.

 

Original link: https://gbatemp.net/threads/pictures-of-the-starlight-fun-center-hospital-wii.548469/

 

[DeadlyFoez | 4]

Please contact me! I have been trying to get my hands on a starlight system to continue dumping the images from the hard drive. I have done a few live stream videos on hacking a couple starlight wii's, but I only had just the wii itself and not the whole kiosk. Part of the problem is the controller select pcb authenticates to the squirrel board.

--DeadlyFoez

EDIT: LOL. I worked on that starlight wii already!!! See HERE

Edited May 9, 2021 by DeadlyFoez

[DeadlyFoez | 4]

In case anyone is interested, ZED has agreed to sell me his starlight unit. IDK if he wants the amount that he sold it to me for disclosed, but I will keep it private for now.
I am going to be doing a live stream hacking event on this kiosk and hopefully getting the game loader ISO from it. It should be rather straight forward to do using a WODE. I could not do it in my previous attempts as I did not have the Controller Select PCB, which is essential to unlocking the internal hard drive.
I am hoping ZED can get this out to me within the next week or so. Either way, there are too many people looking forward to me working on this and figuring out it's last few little secrets.
I will post a link in here to my live stream once I schedule it, but if you are interested then make sure to keep an eye on my website ConsoleBytes for more information. A complete write up will eventually be done on what I discover and everything that I extract will be shared from my private file server for everyone to check out.

I thank you all, and an extra special thanx to ZED for still having this unit once I contacted him and for being willing to sell it to me for these research purposes.

Take care, and until the live stream, happy gaming and happy hacking.

--DeadlyFoez

EDIT: This has been canceled. After searching for a starlight kiosk for a decade and finally finding a way to get my hands on one, someone else just fully hacked one a few days back completely negating any reason for me to get this anymore.

Edited June 14, 2021 by DeadlyFoez

[bowser | 598]

But how would such a large item be shipped safely?