Wii Development Consoles & Games! (RVT-H, RVT-R Wireless & Wired) - H4G

Wii cover 3x Wii Development Units! Including the RVT-H ( dev Wii with a hard drive) and 2x RVT-R units ( Wii dev with optical drives). Of the RVT-R units, one is wired and the other is wireless. Wii also showcase the Wii Menu Installer and a few development discs/games - including a debug version of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Dark Lord! Thank you Andrew for lending us these units and games!
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#Wii #Development #Nintendo #FinalFantasy #crystalchronicles #RetroGaming #GameDev #NR

[@hard4games]

New info on the wired Wii console from one of our patrons! The hard coax connection for the wii was typically to minimize interference in crowded offices where potentially many people would have one . -Tony

[@BrewsterLive]

Hard4Games Can we get a full length version of the theme song?

[@GerbilSoft]

If you haven't already, I'd recommend preserving the contents of the RVT-H Reader system using rvthtool. Search around on Google for more information.

[@TheNews1990]

You could attach any wireless (wifi) / Bluetooth antenna to that BT (Bluetooth) port, and see what happens. You might be able to get a wireless Wii controller working with it.

[@Alexlfm]

If reset does the controller still need to be paired to the system like normal to work? As that’s a fairly standard Bluetooth antenna connector any Bluetooth device would work if you made a cable from the transmitter. I’m fairly certain it just functioned as an antenna port (no need to reinvent anything) so instead of having an antenna it was a wire. Bluetooth is very weak and without an antenna can’t transmit. These units were also used a lot at trade shows for obvious reasons.

[@kquote03]

Explains why there was BT written beside it The remote was probably wireless but just lacked the antenna, so you use a coaxial cable to transmit the signals Edit# after reading the replies, I basically just said what Alexlfm said

[@maxibash]

2:23 Is that...... *The startup disc?*

[@hard4games]

Sure does look like it ;)

[@damian9303]

I'm 100% sure it is. Damn, he'll do the world a favor if he dumps that shit

[@KururuJi]

Holy wow... even if it's not dumped, knowing that a collector has it, that some still exist... well, I'd still love for the community to get to prod at it and solve some decade-old mysteries about it, of course! Even a video about it would be amazing...! For a long time, it was thought all copies of it were destroyed/never got to outside hands. For those also unaware reading this, some Wii which were shipped to be used as kiosks didn't come with the full menu. SO, this disc managed to write to its' internal memory... though some method that homebrew authors and hackers aren't quite sure of yet.

[@hard4games]

@@damian9303 The owner is interested in releasing it. Stay tuned.

[@maxibash]

Apparently wasn't a startup disc. People who are familiar say it has the words "Startup Disc" on it (maybe) and this is just an updater/downgrader that downgrades to v2.1X or v2.0X. A real startup disc has installation WAD's on board, like IOS's and the basic channels that come with the Wii. Also, Wii Backup Fusion can extract and rebuild discs like these, so we could turn this in a v4.3X disc. Still very neat!

[@pinksheep752]

(shows an error screen about save data) alright cool, it works

[@F0nkyNinja]

wasn't really an error, they just didn't have a gamecube memory card put in.

[@hard4games]

Lol, we just wanted to see if it would load the disc. Didn't want to play it. :)

[@renakunisaki]

Well, the game started. So that works.

[@bonkmaykr]

lol

[@d0nnyr0n]

@@F0nkyNinja That was what the error message was saying...

[@WeLikeEggsALot]

He should have checked for any miis that developers made

[@brandonmavor3667]

There was no mii channels

[@brandonmavor3667]

Except the very last model, my bad lol

[@chorusaura]

@@brandonmavor3667 there were mii channels in every model that they showed

[@burntsn0w]

I've never seen a Wii Dev kit before really neat!

[@JohnDoe-xh5wp]

They have been sitting on the counter for a while then again I had no idea what they were.

[@squigin3380]

They're cool but for some reason I always thought they looked like wiis with colored duct tape on it

[@awesomechad7716]

I think this is an early version of the Wii menu done sometime between E3 2006 and IGN's guide from mid-September 2006

[@thekillersandvich1150]

@Hard4Games there is youtuber with a Wii Development Console that contains a beta build of bully scholarship edition his channelname is swegta thought you guys were interested

[@ErroneousClique]

People need to be VERY careful with Rockstar games. They have gone after people and taken sites down that show/host beta material. Rockstar/Take2 are VERY protective of their IPs. Many sites that host beta software refuse to allow people to post Rockstar/Take2 games for fear of having the site taken down. This is why Rockstar beta games are so rare - its not that they aren't out there - its that people dont share what they have often because it can lead to litigation as has happened in the past (why ObscureGamer is gone among other sites/individuals in the scene).

[@heythatsprettygood6492]

how the hell do you make so many videos on bully?

[@HiddenAsbestos]

We had the NDEV devkit units for programming on. They're just boring looking big black metal boxes. Don't think they had the Wii menu system and just loaded you right into the game you were making. They didn't have the corded Wii remotes but that meant we went through a ton of batteries, maybe the cords were used to avoid that?

[@andrewe4075]

Hidden Asbestos the wired controller still requires batteries lol

[@ErroneousClique]

Got an NDEV - they are nothing special looking. The GDEVs are much cooler looking.

[@Bixxy]

rechargable batteries are a thing

[@SuperSmashDolls]

The cord was for interference. You're literally just connecting two Bluetooth antennas into one another, so that you can run hundreds of systems in a large office without any issues.

[@jackpijjin4088]

I remember seeing the red one in the wild! One was used in a local TARGET store as a demo kiosk, under a big plastic dome. I especially remember the fact that it didn't have a disc slot because I wondered if they were using HDD for loading ISOs.

[@CountlessPWNZ]

>selects cat dress >trap error

[@Crazy-qi1gw]

Oh god...

[@budz2355]

Non wireless? Pretty sure we call that wired

[@tr7zw]

No its !!wired

[@hard4games]

Non-Wired, got it!

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

Fucking people and their shit grammar. Your all idiots. Hoo can't spell.

[@FrezzyYT]

Constable Benton Fraser I get the joke

[@over00lordunknown12]

11:53 I can’t even... XD You put the disc in, then at 11:55 I got an advertisement for FarCry 5 on the PlayStation 4.. So basically, you put the disc in and said “and let’s see what happens...” then the PlayStation logo appeared on screen... XD

[@ProfessionalismTrash]

Yes what's wrong with that, sir? Isn't that the PlayStation 2? It's ok if it has the PlayStation logo...

[@Slumlord007]

i got final fantasy

[@renakunisaki]

So, you've dumped the discs and raw images of the hard drive and internal flash, right? So that these rare versions can be preserved and examined (and deleted files recovered) instead of rotting away on discs whose shelf life might only be a couple decades?

[@seijakijin1160]

Rena Kunisaki yeah but they won’t run well on retail hardware. The binaries are designed to log error and save them for devs to read. Those are debug versions. Retail can only save as save files and in some places to the SD card

[@nathanmead140]

@@seijakijin1160 but the HDDs and optical disks should still be dumped so if they break they can be restored on new HDDs and ODs (the memory too because that has the OS on it)

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

@@nathanmead140 get them dumped like i dumped my sisters mom last week.

[@ooferssixtynine4232]

@@constablebentonfraser5014 wait what

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

@@ooferssixtynine4232 it took 5 months of waiting but it was worth every minute just to hear u double take this most glorious of comments.

[@SammyRenard]

The RVT-H one was so stressful to work on. We were told that the erase button wiped out the entire hard disk and that it took ages to transfer builds on those machines so if we ever hit that button even if by accident we were liable to be fired on the spot. Being a video game tester is the shittiest kinda job you can imagine.

[@jkalash762]

Dude i can't even imagine. Just working on small coding projects for my own entertainment over the years has gotten stressful enough at times. I can't imagine having some asshole boss on a strict time schedule barking orders and warnings at you while you're using expensive and volatile dev hardware. I think a lot of people over glorify that field of work that haven't done it first hand. I'm sure it has it's moments and perks but i can see why there's a lot of downsides to it too.

[@KoolLeo11]

Wait you're a Wii dev

[@SammyRenard]

@@KoolLeo11 no, I was a game tester

[@SammyRenard]

@@jkalash762 I think it's more because it took forever to transfer builds to it (retail Wiis have one 1.1 and one 2.0 usb slots, and even 2.0 usb is still pretty slow for transfering multi-gigabyte builds, and a wiped wii meant a wasted shift for them still stupid for them to do that but whatever

[@chelseydavidson6264]

I love your channel. It feels like a bunch of friends just hanging out and i love that.

[@shibba2517]

you probably don't have friends 🤣🤣😜😜

[@Dionicio3]

I cringed when you called the Mii Channel "Miiverse"

[@hard4games]

Miiverse Channel, Got it!

[@shipy490]

@@hard4games Mii Channel* 😅

[@paskpinishkes5112]

@@shipy490 r/wooosh

[@engineerbot]

Shipy r/woooosh

[@BlockbusterVideo]

I did too!

[@ingamelevi1929]

They say "And it has a diskcheck channel, but we don't have a disk/disc". They seem to a be a bit uneducated on the difference between a disk and a disc. A disk is any storage medium that can store digital data. A disc is specifically a circular platter that can store data on it. For example, Floppy Disks are not discs, but they are disks.

[@byronjoel1400]

Thank you Captain Obvious.

[@TechNerd22]

9:45 "error trap system" THE NINTENDO WII IS A TRAP! THROW THEM AWAY

[@AbdAbdAbdAbd]

@@SebaUbuntu but it's not old enough.

[@LennyQUMFIF]

Call the Police! *Wii U Wii U Wii U Wii U*

[@spangeloyt7990]

This just blew my mind, i never ever knew of the RVT-H or even a wired wiimote. Now i'm doing my own research on the wii lol. Amazing work guys!

[@tehPwnzor7306]

There are a couple probable reasons for the "wired" Wiimote. The less likely one (in my mind) is that either the Bluetooth radio in the console hadn't been finalized yet (i.e. no amplifiers or antenna had been designed and built); more likely is that the wireless hardware in the console hadn't been FCC-approved yet (though that would presumably also mean no WiFi). Both of those theories rely on the "wired" devkit being some sort of pre-release unit for developers of launch titles, which I realize is a big assumption. Do y'all still have your hands on these? A follow-up post/vid with a teardown by someone who knows what they're doing (more than y'all) would be really interesting!

[@RockRedGenesis]

Love Dev hardware, so interesting to learn about! And finding out about obscure betas of games. Subbed.

[@wojiaobill]

you boys have nice wiis

[@userk2876]

That´s what she said ;)

[@icyyfire8528]

imagine someone saying hey nice weewee

[@panoramhusky]

I love u nits, especially Wii Dev ones. Good episode

[@coreytrevor1920]

This channel is great man keep it up

[@jackispurple2936]

THIS GUY HAD THE WII START UP DISK THE ENTIRE TIME???

[@MobCat_]

1:37 giving benefit of the doubt it might of been a interference issue where you get 30 or 40 wii dev kits in a room and you run out of Bluetooth channels.. if it was cost cutting it would of been a usb style cable to provide both data and power to the wii mote so the wii mote could just be a shell

[@hard4games]

Probably an interference issue or what you mentioned. We have since learned a bit more.

[@colinsullivan3353]

That Wii menu install disk is relatively unknown and thought to be lost. Please dump it to your pc or something

[@necronut]

New channel name idea: Flaccid for Tax Reform

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

Fuck you

[@permanentlyabandoned]

uoy kcuF

[@Fortuna1]

This looks interesting, the debug games, the firmware prototype, this need be preserved and shared

[@shanafan]

6:36.. Actually it’s not weird playing with cord to the Wiimote - that’s how you use a classic controller ☺️

[@hard4games]

Lol I guess that's true

[@CopyTheCompcom]

Or a nunchuck

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

Fuck you

[@CheezyCEAnimation]

Constable Benton Fraser No u

[@CopyTheCompcom]

@@constablebentonfraser5014 why

[@matt4193]

11:54 do these consoles have more blue LEDs? iirc the retail consoles have two on the sides and nothing else. In the video it looks like a nice row covering both the top and bottom of the disc slid

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

Fuck you

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

@@nathanmead140 because i need a good cum

[@chopsmccartney6786]

I actually saw quite a few on eBay a few days ago. They're pretty slick looking, but I don't know what I'd do with it if I had one... Except send it to the guys who know! Keep up the awesome!

[@msamiullah001]

very cool to see this

[@ok-tr1nw]

Error trap system The system is a trap!!

[@Lilithe]

I'd like to have seen more of what's finished and what's broken about the devkit games. :)

[@casperas2]

Arent there any differences in the mii channel or system 1 and 2? Im really curious

[@arcticpromedia7615]

System 1 & 2 likely refers to the system design revision? As there are also an "original" and a "non-gc" revision of the wii. Not even considering the Canadian black/red variety.

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

No

[@quirble]

Diskcheck Tool has menu music similar to Cars on the Wii, I just noticed.

[@DokuFREENET]

6:20 20 kinutes. Heres a tip: Set the consoles date back close to the time your loking for.

[@Pokefanof2009]

dudes I loved that intro. all ready sub'ed and not even 2 minutes in.

[@MinecrafterPictures]

Fun Fact: Based of my knowledge early releases of Wii have comes with a retail install disc since they weren't 100% complete even though they're released

[@robintst]

Tony finds all the coolest toys. A really awesome find, if any at all still exist out there, would be one of the blue box Genesis dev kits by Electronic Arts back in the late-80s/early-90s they backwards engineered for themselves when SEGA was having trouble supplying official SDK's to their licensees. EA weren't the only ones to make their own Genesis dev kits either, there were a number of them both in the US and UK.

[@ROFLkopter89]

Still love the Hard 4 Games intro song 😊

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

Fuck you

[@shibba2517]

@@constablebentonfraser5014 hahaha

[@nathanmead140]

i skipped it

[@TubboDaKittyCat]

Constable Benton Fraser I love you dude. Your reply to every comment is “Fuck you”. Lol

[@AbnormalAdeptOfficial]

Can u guys release the debug ff Crystal Chronicles as a wad?

[@TeamHELPER]

I doubt they would dump the game as a wad. Their job is to show off what they have and show the features of it, not dumping the whole thing, they might have dumped it, we have no clue, but we know they wouldn't release it for download as it condones piracy.

[@RuviaPawz]

Man wii was soo fun

[@hokostudios]

Huh. Never expected to see My Life as a Darklord in a H4G video!

[@cranehermit]

Oh man I gotta have one of these

[@PieStudios]

These look really cool, they could've been special character variants like with the special WiiMotes.

[@steavenortiz]

I actually just found a Wii U one. Saw this video looking for info on it. I have no idea what I’m looking at 😆 It has a green front also and the back of the game pad is also green. I would like to see a video on it

[@FireJojoBoy]

That was epic

[@LawnMeower]

Just got my wireless RVT-R (from a former EA clerk I think). Sadly I don't have the Wii Menu Installer disc so I can't dump my prototype of Crazy Taxi for the NGC

[@DeskoDev]

I know a guy who has two dev units as well. No startup disc though. One's an RVT-H and the other's an RVT-R, not sure if it's wireless or wired.

[@arcticpromedia7615]

Although some people have mentioned a valid point. If the HDDWii has a removeable drive, the Partitions could be cloned by removing it (if thats what the owner wants) but as only the HDDWii has a hard drive, what else would you want to clone the data to? It would be possible, but what would you use it on?

[@seijakijin1160]

For disk check, it’s referring to the FILESYSTEM hard drive disk, not the optical disc. Disc with a c at the end refers to optical drives. The disk with a k refers to hard drive.

[@minerdudeman234]

The channel looks interesting, show it to my friends

[@AirHomeboy187]

Insane

[@Phantastic_Otaku]

Man I really wanted to see the Sonic Adventure 2 Battle Prototype I played that game as a kid

[@RogerMedrano]

that wii with the HDD, "Disk" with "k" usually means hard drive, so, it checks errors in the HDD

[@anthonyaviles8665]

Nice cool hardware

[@TerrorTales4271998]

legit my favorite channel we jus have the same interests

[@soiralknarf]

Jesus christ I can FEEL the sounds from 6:01 inside of my head(wearing headphones) I thought something was wrong with me lol

[@GameInterest]

My Life as a Darklord is how I feel when I tell my kids to go to bed at a reasonable hour on a Saturday.

[@cannyofmemegkwrti8641]

It actually has Wii uninstaller and Wii disk check , ye I also have

[@daKaosjr]

What happened to your NPDP Reader?

[@colddripgaming]

When I worked in the industry, burning a disc every time a build came through would have killed us. We would often have multiple builds a day and a dozen employees so if it was a single disc or even a single USB it would have killed our productivity and would have cost a fortune

[@agnarsvideodump3816]

Have you considered using cleanrip on a non dev-kit Wii to rip the content of the start up disk?

[@stephenfiler3204]

Good to see Louie again.

[@MegaManNeo]

That's content I like. And luckily, you guys have tons of it! But I have to ask, can't you backup the dev discs?

[@hard4games]

We always do

[@gblaze420]

“Error Trap system” when you go to the cat dress lol

[@simpkira]

my life as king was fun i never played dark lord though

[@arcticpromedia7615]

On the disc front, I know its not likey because they probably gave the NR discs a different file system; do the NR discs not work at all in a de-restricted region unlocked wii? I know the standard discs read the barcode section, then lead in, then a lot jump to read outside-in like the second layer of a DVD.

[@BrawlingHedgehog]

Huh, that's odd. I just saw this game on the Wii Shop Channel a couple weeks ago.

[@maquez650]

2 questions: can i donwload these dev discs somewhere and two, can i play them with us launcher gx or homebrew channel?

[@CrazyGamerDude17]

I really want that final fantasy debug rom

[@HeroUnibr0]

You should have tried the Wii channels, the last Disc Channel w Was definately different.

[@NextinHKRY]

I've noticed something, is the Wii Menu on the first green Wii you showed have a modified Wii Menu? because the channels look thinner

[@Lethaltail]

Diskcheck music: *almost* as good as Wii Shop Channel music

[@plasmar1]

if any of those were from Bushing(doesn't look like it), I sold em it:) ** green variant wired; the wired variant was due to licensing for use of Bluetooth or least that's what bushing told me at the time

[@plasmar1]

s279.photobucket.com/user/djpc47/library/Wii

[@randombagel2018]

I love how it says on the sticker that its confidential *_U h o h_*

[@JessicaFEREM]

Imagine plugging your wiimote into the wii

[@ryanwakebradtelle8682]

I wonder what the Wii u Dev units look like, and it here were any in the form factor of the Wii? And if so I wounder if it could be portablezed

[@beep2997]

Holding discs like that may scratch them

[@aldenaoc8847]

Finally! But one question, what if you happened to put a regular wii disc in this and what if you put a debug disc in a regular wii and a wii mini?

[@Dugeek98]

it won't work, debug wii can only read debug games and regular wii can't

[@spongechair]

6:23 Ooh, I should get the WAD file for that game!

[@DiamondProAlpine]

swegta has an RVT-H with 3 bully builds on it it bricked just by him pressing the home button when the game crashed it just goes to show how fragile these are he has recently got another one that contains a debug buiid of bully

[@TeamHELPER]

Well the HDD is completely functional. So it isn't totally bricked, although the console that plays them is. He could still play them on the Dolphin Emulator. I'd dump the other RVT-H with the debug build of Bully if I were him, just in case the other RVT-H bricks.

[@anilcank]

That final fantasy game is my childhood

[@AuntieAliasing]

9:35 hard for games indeed

[@mario7ranger]

What file format do games need to be in for the red hard drive unit to read them for play?

[@KoolLeo11]

9:41 I just love how it just crashes when putting on the cat dress. - ERROR TRAP SYSTEM - ASSERTION FAILED: m_resMdl.IsValid() : File WCMenuActor.cpp, Line 673

[@Falcobird01]

Tries the cat dress, game crashes and system begins nutting over a trap. 😂😂😂😂

[@nitronikolai]

Console:”it’s only gay if you don’t say no homo

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

No homo

[@sonixthatsme]

Aren't these more debug units instead of development units? Cause I have a devkit and it's basically black metal box.

[@r4ww836]

I wonder what Miis they made.

[@efwefwef4747]

Omg guys!!! Lazier then Virtual Boy episode! Just kidding!!!!! Good stuff Any idea what system menu they are running?

[@ShaffySwitcher]

efwefwef Its literally called NDEV Menu

[@efwefwef4747]

3.3 or something older

[@Calthecool]

9:42 Changes to cat dress *Trap error*

[@AbdAbdAbdAbd]

F

[@Vamptonius]

When you speed up the calendar search, the sound moved to just inside the back of my neck. I tend to use earbuds (currently some lovely wooden ones from Bob Marley). Also, the DevCube has gone?

[@hard4games]

Lol sorry, didn't anticipate that. I have an NR Reader and a GDEV (can read NPDP). Got rid of the NPDP Reader because the functionality between the NPDP Reader and GDEV was redundant.

[@Vamptonius]

@@hard4games Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it. It was just a little freaky deaky.

[@CocoTheMii]

The "Today's Play History" message represents usage time as HH:MM, not MM:SS. "Dummy Title Name" was actually in use for 1 minute, not 1 second.

[@undefined7206]

am i the only person who thinks that the Dev consoles look better than the normal wiis with the colored front plate?

[@TeamHELPER]

Nope!

[@ccf_1004]

I wonder if you could Homebrew them...

[@TeamHELPER]

You actually can! It has an SD card support, so yeah, it's possible.

[@ChaosZero.]

I have a question. On the console there's a big sticker saying something along the lines of "confidential property of Nintendo". Did they ever actually come after you, in the sense of contacting you in regards to how you got your hands on some of the development units/games/discs that were never supposed to be shown publically? I get that someone somewhere most likely "forgot" to return his unit and it eventually ended up on the public market, but I was wondering if Nintendo ever cared enough (if, at all) about these things, considering how hard they chase rom websites down.

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

I have a dev kit and I had to sign an enhanced disclaimer after nintendo tracked the unit to my address, turned out it had been a unit owned by a rockstar games programmer who did some work on bully for wii, had to sign forms, complete a full background check, tax and social security conpliance, and numerous other things, they have a database regsiter of all dev units and categorise all owners of units and give licences for the use of and ownership of nintendo property for non commercial purposes. *edited for spelling*

[@grumpycomputers7488]

@@constablebentonfraser5014 did u get to keep it and all the stuff in it you should have gotten to keep it as its your wii

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

@@grumpycomputers7488 I only got to keep it on the contractual grounds that I do not discuss, share or sell the content. It has an unreleased 95% complete localised copy of Zangeki No Reginleiv a japanese exclusive but this one is in English

[@grumpycomputers7488]

@@constablebentonfraser5014 Alright so you get to keep it Sadly u cant discuss sell it or share the files

[@constablebentonfraser5014]

@@grumpycomputers7488 Yea but I am a dangerous person and contracts don't mean anything to me.

[@hollowtrove3492]

0:56, Is that from a video on this channel? If so, could you link me to it.

[@patcollins4023]

9:47 >menuActor.nut hehe nut

[@paulhalvorson6122]

What was that disk channel music?