I Tried Using the Wii's Web Browser in 2025, Here's How it Went

Browsing the web connected a games console from 2006: what could perchance spell wrong? As it turns out, almost—but not quite—everything.

Introducing the Wii Internet Channel

First, a reminder, due to the fact that adjacent if you were determination astatine the time, you’ve astir apt forgotten astir things astir the Wii beyond Mario Kart and Wii Sports. Yes, it offered much too these games; adjacent much than the Switch does today, by immoderate measures.

The Wii’s location paper riffed connected a TV metaphor, with a grid of screen-shaped channels to grip each tasks, from playing a crippled to checking connected the weather. One of these channels—introduced conscionable aft launch—was the Internet Channel, a mentation of the Opera browser adapted to the console.

The Internet Channel uses a nonstop transportation via your router, truthful there’s nary engagement of Nintendo-owned servers during this process. In theory, this means that it cannot beryllium unopen off, truthful the bundle should proceed to function. Let’s spot if that mentation pans retired successful practice.

Booting Up a Wii for Web Browsing successful 2025

The archetypal situation facing maine was a hardware one. Having dragged my aged Wii retired of the attic, and dusted it off, I needed to plug it into a TV. The Wii utilized a composite cable, which is beauteous old-fashioned by today’s standards.

This cablegram has 3 connectors, colored red, white, and yellow; astir modern TVs deficiency the ports needed to plug these in. Fortunately, my TV is aged capable to enactment this standard, truthful booting up my Wii for the archetypal clip successful good implicit a decennary was a straightforward process.

Since I hadn’t ever utilized the Wii with my existent router (or adjacent successful my existent house!), I had to spell done the process of mounting up a caller connection, but that worked flawlessly. Finally, I had to get clasp of the Internet Channel itself. For immoderate reason, this wasn’t disposable to maine initially, but I could inactive adhd the transmission since I’d downloaded it previously.

To get clasp of the Internet Channel, simply unfastened up the Wii Shop, bathe successful that glorious eShop music, past navigate to “Titles You’ve Already Downloaded.” Locate the channel, past download it:

Trying Out Simple Text Sites

I began by trying the simplest imaginable sites I could deliberation of. The archetypal was example.com, a reserved domain intended for documentation and akin uses. This tract hosts a precise basic, text-only leafage with inline styles and nary JavaScript. As such, it stood the champion accidental of succeeding—and it did:

I tried different elemental site, Txti. Although the tract conscionable displays a “retirement” message, it’s inactive accessible utilizing the Wii, truthful determination was anticipation for different text-based sites.

Unfortunately, I was little palmy with different elemental sites, similar Hacker News oregon lobste.rs, which some refused me. Craigslist was different I held retired immoderate anticipation for, but it besides failed to load.

Browsing More Complex Sites

Next, I checked retired the Favorites list. This confirmed that I’d made precise small usage of the Internet Channel before, but a fistful of sites was present, perchance by default. Yahoo was a no-go, but Google looked rather promising:

Search effect links, however, spell via a Google proxy URL, truthful accessing them requires a spot of editing. But, adjacent accessing URLs straight was often doomed to failure, with a connection speechmaking "Handshake failed due to the fact that the server does not privation to judge the enabled SSL/TLS protocol versions."

BBC iPlayer besides looked rather promising, if not precisely error-free. Accessing the tract presented a big of informing messages astir expired certificates, and the last surface looked acold from perfect:

However, it did negociate to load and adjacent fto maine navigate to idiosyncratic shows, fueling anticipation that thing utile could originate from the experiment. Ultimately, though, determination was nary mode of controlling the video player, truthful I couldn’t really presumption immoderate video footage astatine all.

Wikipedia was different tract that I thought had promise, fixed its text-focused quality and its precise wide appeal. Sadly, it excessively suffered from information errors. Most of these errors were caused by sites requiring the newer TLS protocol. The Wii’s Internet Channel supported SSL 3.0, and this mentation of the Opera browser was ne'er upgraded to enactment TLS, truthful galore modern websites are inaccessible.

Are There Any Workarounds?

It’s harmless to accidental that browsing the web connected your Wii successful 2025 is acold from satisfactory. Even if you restrict yourself to the astir basal sites, it’s a precise hit-and-miss affair. Probably your champion stake is to usage a “dumb proxy” similar FrogFind to fetch sites connected your behalf:

FrogFind works beauteous good connected the Wii due to the fact that of its attack to backward compatibility. The tract is simply a hunt engine, but alternatively of linking straight to each result, it proxies results done its ain engine. As a result, FrogFind serves you a simpler mentation of each result, without each the trimmings that tin origin older browsers to fail.

Since FrogFind handles unafraid connections to each site, the certificate errors that plagued my earlier attempts were besides nary longer present. Each tract is downgraded arsenic a result, truthful this attack is astir apt not suitable for immoderate remotely analyzable web apps similar iPlayer oregon Bluesky, but if you indispensable browse the net connected a Wii successful 2025, it astatine slightest gives you a warring chance.