It’s been almost a year now since I gave a little talk at a soirée thrown by Opera up in London. It remains one of the most pretentious speeches I’ve ever given, second only to my first Reboot talk. It was also one of the most stressful—my iBook was playing silly buggers, leaving me to try to recall all that purple prose from memory.
Still, it was a fun night out. Everyone seemed to like what I had to say and the folks from Opera said they were very pleased. “Oh, really?” I said with a gleam in my eye. “Then I probably deserve some sort of reward, don’t I?”
I was assured that some token of appreciation would indeed be forthcoming. Given Opera’s partnership with Nintendo, it wasn’t unrealistic of me to contemplate visions of a DS Lite or even a Wii. Sure enough, within a few weeks a package arrived at the Clearleft office. I eagerly opened it up to find… a cartridge of the Opera browser for the DS Lite. It was a nice thought but seeing as I don’t have a DS Lite, it was of little use to me (I passed it on to Paul).
I thought that was the end of the story but then I bumped into some of the Opera posse at South by Southwest. “We’re still planning to get you that Wii,” they said. “But it’s just so hard to find one.” These words were the sparks that reignited the flame of my gaming dreams. “I’m getting a Wii,” I would tell anyone who would listen, “any day now.”
But as the weeks and then the months passed by, my optimism began to flag. Sometimes I would see David Storey at a conference. “We’re still getting you that Wii,” he would say. “Sure,” I’d say, “sure.”
The most recent of these exchanges was at the dConstruct after-party. “They still haven’t gotten you that Wii?” asked David. I assured him that they hadn’t. “That’s terrible,” he said, “but they’re so hard to find in Norway. Are they hard to find here in the UK?” I grabbed someone who was walking by and asked, “Are Wiis hard to find?” “Not any more,” I was told. “That’s it,” said David, “I’m going to go into a shop tomorrow before I leave town and buy you a Wii.”
Now I realised that it could have just been the alcohol talking but in the long-standing tradtion of taking advantage of those in an inebriated state, I pressed my phone number into David’s hand, telling him, “Call me when you’ve got it and I can come and meet you.”
Alas, David’s phone battery died the next day. For want of a phone call, the plan fell through. But all was not lost. Opera’s newest employee is Chris Mills, aka Mills of Steel, aka Dark Satanic Mills. He was also at dConstruct and could clearly see the sad desparation in my eyes. Taking matters into his own hands, he simply bought a Wii on Amazon and had it shipped to me.
It showed up last week. It was like Christmas but better because at Christmas time I didn’t have a Wii and now I do.
It didn’t take long to get it all set up. Chris had thoughtfully sent on some Wii points as well. I dutifully spent 500 of those points on the Opera browser.
By good fortune, I had a house guest at the time. Joe was in town for the ATypI conference. Inevitably then, we spent the first hour of Wii time testing various sites in the browser. Everything is rendered in a somewhat unusual font, featuring a particularly odd “e”, its crossbar tilted at a jaunty angle… hey, you’d start to talk like this too if Joe Clark came to visit you.
Unlike the iPhone, the Wii comes with support for Flash (hence games like PandiPanda). That means that sIFR works flawlessly. There’s also an in-built zoom layout option which I suspect is using Opera’s small-screen rendering.
Once we had established all that, we moved onto the real order of business. I had already experienced the joy of Wii sports once or twice but Joe had his Wii cherry popped that night. Much fun was had. Jessica kicked our asses at bowling, for which she dispays a remarkable aptitude.
Now that there is a Wii in the household, I fear that my already poor productivity may plummet to new depths. On the other hand, this little gaming console might just provide me with the most exercise I’ve had in years.
Tusen takk, Opera.
