Tuesday 2 January 2007

Online Browsing on Wii

Happy New Year Wii fans! As the New Year rolls in, I can't help notice in that it has become acceptable to say "I have to have a Wii" in a conversation without fear of a barrage of urine-related attempts at humour!

I've just installed the Beta Opera Browser on my Wii and I must say I'm quite impressed with the result. Not only does it take two minutes to set up if you have a wireless network in place but Flash and Ajax sites render perfectly too. Navigation is straightforward - you can zoom in on the page with + and scroll with B if your TV is too low res (which it probably will be). Nintendo really need to bring out a keyboard though as even typing in web addresses with the Wiimote/onscreen keyboard is a challenge! It seems that regular keyboards will not plug and play with the console so it would appear that Nintendo want to release a first party keyboard of its own or it will release drivers at a later date. If you own a Wii-related website look out for the user agent:

Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1309-9; en)

in your logs to see if anyone has navigated to your site with a Wii.

So what sites are worth browsing on the Wii? Well, the blogosphere seems packed with posts along the lines of - "wow, surfing porn on my Hi-Def TV through my Wii is so much better than before." (I won't be so foolish as to debate the merits of that argument here) Indeed Google Blog Search for Wii Porn yields over 10,000 results suggesting that this is a popular point of discussion, much of it related to a rather exaggerated story decrying the Wii as a "porn gateway" for kids.

Here's an interesting site I stumbled across during my online adventures - Wiicade.com. The premise is simple - a collection of mouse-only flash games to play on the Wii. My personal favourite is Tactical Assault. While it isn't Red Steel, its a stylish, fun flash shoot-em-up. Check it out.

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