Nintendo, Starlight partner to help sick kids

Always good to see videogames and their companies portrayed in a positive light instead of "harbingers of youthful crimes and violence".

On the one hand, generosity is never a bad thing, but it seems like Child's Play (and gamers) have been doing this sort of charity work for a number of years now - and not because it looks good on a press release.

(additionally, that kiosk looks like a pretty awful way to play Wii sports.)

They donated two "fun stations" to the hospital my wife is a pediatric resident at... good stuff.

I think its a great thing no maybe they will make a bigger screen for them..

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My son had surgery last week. I was very surprised when the nurse rolled one of these in because I'd never heard about it.

When you boot it up, it doesn't go right into the Wii Menu. Instead, there are floating game covers (similar to the iPod interface). You click on one of the covers and the system loads that game. There were a lot of games to choose from, including Sports, LoZ, Paper Mario, Carnival Games, Elebits... probably 15-20 in all. There was a separate device attached to the Wii (which wasn't visible, by the way) inside the kiosk. From what I could tell, it controlled the power and might have held the games. It didn't look like a multi-disc device.

The controllers are tethered to the kiosk. There was a switch to choose Wiimote only vs. Wiimote+Nunchuck. One problem: I couldn't tell which Nunchuck went with the Wiimote I had. Volume was set rather low and couldn't be adjusted--so as not to disturb other patients, I assumed.

The aim was off. I tried to access the system menu to adjust it (maybe it was set to below the screen when the transmitter was above the screen), but it was disabled. It didn't bother us much because my son chose a game that didn't rely on precise aim, but I could see how it would get annoying.

I didn't have a problem playing, even though the cables were a little stiff. Unfortunately, since my son was in bed, the stiffness of the cables made it difficult to play, especially for games that required the bowling motion. He was sitting in a bed, as most recovering patients would. I understand a need for security, but tethering the controllers for a system that is made for motion and freedom really doesn't make sense. It also doesn't make much sense for patients with fresh stitches or recently repaired limbs to be playing a system like the Wii. Sure, parents can tell their six-year-olds to only play games that don't require a swinging motion like I did, and other parents can hope that he would listen (like mine did). I'm sure that it's great for patients with less physically challenging issues, though.

I think this was a very nice gesture on Nintendo's part--I'm just not sure if it's the right type of system to be in a hospital. So many people want the Wii and to have it in a hospital for recovering children is a great, great idea, but a system that doesn't require motion to play might have been better.

Nintendo has been making these gaming centres (albeit with GCs, not Wiis) for quite a while now. I remember playing Pikmin whilst suffering from chest infection. So while this partnership is obviously nothing new, it's nice to see it pop over the Atlantic and all.

Guitar Hero did something like this a little while ago!

http://community.guitarhero.com/news_posts/28