Web Browsers on Video Game Consoles

(vale.rocks)

27 points | by robin_reala 2 hours ago

6 comments

  • lxgr 1 hour ago
    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).

    • KeplerBoy 1 hour ago
      I bought the NDS version back in the day and let me tell you it was not worth the 40€ of my pocket money.
  • mid-kid 15 minutes ago
    The Game Boy Color/GBA also had a web browser in the form of the Mobile Trainer GB, although it didn't allow inputting arbitrary URLs (although one can modify the DNS, it wasn't documented) and its limited subset of HTML might stretch the definition of "web browser" a little.
  • CM30 53 minutes ago
    I remember a couple of people making websites specifically for these apps. Wasn't super common, but there were definitely a few Nintendo forums and communities that were built with the 3DS browser's viewport and design in mind.

    And while there's nothing official, there are ways to use the built in Switch browser like a normal browser through homebrew as well. I think one setup even allows functionality the default browser doesn't support, like normal HTML video tags.

  • alhadrad 1 hour ago
    My first experience with porn was the Dreamcast browser.
  • doublerabbit 1 hour ago
    I am surprised how deeply rooted Macromedia flash was.

    For a console browser to chug Flash is impressive.

    • robin_reala 1 hour ago
      Flash was on a bunch of mobile platforms, just not iOS. When it became clear that Apple were going to take a sizeable chunk of the market and were never going to support it, Adobe decided to cut their losses: https://web.archive.org/web/20111116013328/http://blogs.adob...
      • troupo 47 minutes ago
        IIRC Android gave up on Flash after iOS and before Adobe's announcement
    • keyle 58 minutes ago
      Well back in the day, if you wanted to provide some interactive experience worth having on the web, you did it Flash.

      It fits entirely to be supported on consoles.

    • asimovDev 54 minutes ago
      I remember trying to browse a Flash build promo website for Transformers 2 on my PSP (what a 2009 sentence) and it wouldn't load. I was quite disappointed.
  • danbolt 1 hour ago
    I remember the Wii U browser’s MP4 playback being surprisingly helpful. Running the `http-server` npm package, I was able to get video from my laptop to the TV in a pinch.

    Adding in Handbrake, it wasn’t that bad of a setup!