Nintendo has just announced that lucky Wii owners (grrr, them again) will be able to download, try out and enjoy the flip out of a trial version of the Opera internet browser as of December 22nd. That’s this Friday, for those of you without a calendar to hand.

The trial version is free to download and is fully Flash-enabled, meaning that the Wii internet experience won’t be quite as static or truncated as you might have imagined. The point and click interface sounds a bit fiddly to us – navigating the web is a matter of wrangling the Wii Remote, Nunchuk and an on-screen keyboard. The Remote is used to input the URL via the keyboard and sort-of doubles as a mouse thereafter, with users able to aim at, zoom in on and click-through to the in-screen item they wish to view. Meanwhile the ‘Chuk is used to scroll up and down screen. If all that sounds like hard work – and we’re assured it really isn’t – you can always plug a regular USB keyboard in instead, and there are various Youtube videos of Wii owners doing just that. There’s also a neat video of the system in use at http://uk.wii.com/movies/internetchannel/

The trial version of the Opera browser will be available until the end of March ’07, when the full version will be released. This is going to be free until “after June” whereupon the powers that be will slap a 500 Point price tag on it. Best get it gratis while you can then...