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Comment by lxgr | Hacker News Reader

The browser on the Wii was amazing. I didn't use it all that often, but I was a big Opera fan back in the day, and it was amazing to see how well their engine scaled to all kinds of systems.

As far as I remember, there were even some games that supported the Wiimote natively? I don't remember if this was via Flash or Javascript, but there seems to be a library for the latter: https://github.com/ryanmcgrath/wii-js

I unfortunately never got to use the Nintendo DS version (the DS being WEP-only was a dealbreaker for me).

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Yep, I remember a brief period of time where I would play Flash games on the Wii browser, I think there were indeed some that were explicitly made for the Wii browser. Fun times!

I bought the NDS version back in the day and let me tell you it was not worth the 40€ of my pocket money.

I ended up getting that "Not really a flashcart" Datel DS flashcart, and I loaded it up with DSOrganize, a homebrew "OS"

https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/DSOrganize

It had a semi functional web browser included, without the RAM expansion cart! It somehow managed to browse most simple web pages on the inbuilt RAM from a hobbyist!

It also had an IRC client, and that was my introduction to IRC

And Internet Radio! You could point it at an internet radio station with a special "playlist" file that had a URL, so that's how I helped feed my Technobase.fm addiction at the time, before smartphones. I could carry around my DS and listen to internet radio!

Now Datel is a name I haven't heard in a while. Reminds me of those action replay devices which modified the console's memory to cheat. Ahh the nostalgia.

I remember how, if you wanted to swap the top and bottom screens, it would spin and spin and spin… definitely a painful experience.

I actually think it was worth the money though, at least for me, because having a pocketable device that could access the internet was so special at that time.

Also, the DSi’s web browser was legitimately good. In addition to being fast enough, the zoomed out bottom screen and zoomed in top screen was great for browsing designed-for-a-desktop websites.

yeah, I had low expectations but not that low.

I ended up using it on "lite websites" to read the news while commuting to work on the free wifi.

If only the Wii had supported 1080p or even 720p output, it could have been a great way to browse the web in your living room. Many companies have tried this, but none of them had the correct input device. I think this could have changed the overall direction of technology.

Unfortunately, at 640x480 everything was too small, even back then.

I found even the 256x192 resolution of the DSi browser to be a fine size to use. I don't think 640x480 was too small.

It’s definitely usable, it’s just not a first-class experience. Like the difference between browsing a non-responsive website on an iPhone versus a desktop.

Some docs: https://web.archive.org/web/20070603082704/http://dev.opera....

The site for Homestar Runner had some wii specific flash games.

https://old.homestarrunner.com/videlectrix/vii/

A few games did use Wii-JS - one of my most favorite projects to have worked on over the years, lol

I remember using Orb on the Wii way back then for media streaming. Good times!

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