Homebrew Kids friendly Retroarch setup on Wii

wiindsurf

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I'm looking for ways to make a Retroarch setup on Wii more kids friendly...

I'm mainly aiming for two things:
1. A visual interface with pictures / icons instead of text, seeing not all the kids can read yet.
2. Some sort of kiosk mode where all option tweaking is hidden away, or password secured, preferably booting up straight to game selection.

A good example is the NES/SNES Classic Mini's interface, where you are greated with visual game selection straight up, and kids just know what to do...
I have CFG USB Loader set up in kiosk mode and it works great, the kids have never messed up, so I'm trying to replicate the experience on RA.

RGUI is extremely text heavy and I feel RA's UI in general is very confusing and often frustrating even to the average adult...
From the research I've done it looks like the Wii version doesn't support anything but RGUI?
I naively thought RA could be easily skinned to oblivion (say like WiiFlow), but that doesn't seem to be the case?

PS: Slightly off topic, but I can't find the Online Updater, is it not available in the Wii release? I've got it showing all advanced options, but it still doesn't seem to be there... Thanks!
 

JuanMena

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It's impossible. Not enough ram to do all of it.

BUT you can set up Retroarch in WiiFlow to achieve all you are asking for. But I don't have any experience with WiiFlow at all so I cannot tell you about that.

As for the Online Updater it doesn't work on Wii and probably never has and never will. You have to update it manually.
Just download the latest cores and replace them.
The boot.dol doesn't matter.

Last thing, do not download RA for Wii from the official site, I've found they never work.
Use Wiibrew instead
 
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wiindsurf

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Thanks!

Funny there's not enought RAM when WiiFlow and others can clearly do visual interfaces with hundreds of cover artwork... Oh well...

I thought the Online Updater was also used to get cover art etc, so I suppose those have to be manually added?

BTW, can any other RA version, say WiiU or PS3, run in some sort of kiosk mode?
 
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JuanMena

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Thanks!

Funny there's not enought RAM when WiiFlow and others can clearly do visual interfaces with hundreds of cover artwork... Oh well...

BTW, can any other RA version, say WiiU or PS3, run in some sort of kiosk mode?
If I'm not mistaken, WiiFlow used an Emulated Nand that needs to be located in a hard drive or external memory.
I think an Emunand is basically a Custom Wii OS which is why it's able to do what it does. :unsure:

If you own an external hard drive, by all means you can use WiiFlow and set-up an EmuNand.

If you don't want to go through all that trouble, you can use: SNES9XGX, FCEUMGX, VBAGX as they has the option to display screenshots and covers, but of course, it's limited to just those three emulators.

If you're unsure about Retroarch, but still want to use it, I'd suggest you to read this mini guide to set it up: https://gbatemp.net/threads/retroarch-wii-setting-it-up-mini-tutorial.590900/
 
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wiindsurf

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Thanks. Nice guide!

AFAIK, the three main loaders (GX, CFG, Flow) don't use emunand for UI purposes, it's all in RAM...

I'm aware of the separate emulators, and have one of them installed, but the cover art was a very painful thing to set up. I was hoping RA to be more modern and automated, but it seems to go backwards in some ways...
 
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JuanMena

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Thanks. Nice guide!

AFAIK, the three main loaders (GX, CFG, Flow) don't use emunand for UI purposes, it's all in RAM...

I'm aware of the separate emulators, and have one of them installed, but the cover art was a very painful thing to set up. I was hoping RA to be more modern and automated, but it seems to go backwards in some ways...
Well, considering the Wii came out in 2006? I guess everything feels outdated.
But it works, and that's all that matters to me.

I recently installed RetroArch on an old tablet for my kid.
I mean, I'm able to use other GUI's with that... and most importantly... it will keep the kid away from the Wii.

If you have a PC/PS3/4/5/XBOX you can use modern versions of RetroArch on them.

In my opinion, RetroArch on the Wii is not that bad. You just have to get rid of the useless menu options, set-up directories properly and just Load Core -> Load Content and you'll be playing your games effortlessly.

But I do understand the struggle of it not being User friendly and specially Kid Friendly. Certainly RetroArch on the Wii needs a better treatment.
 

linkchidori

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I suggest you to simply use the standalone emulators available like VBA GX, Snes9x, etc. They have been releasing updates for them with improvements and fixes in recent months, and their UI is actually extremely simple and kid friendly. Also, their compatibility its extremely good.
 

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