So excited was I at the prospect of a web-browser for the DS, that I may have - I'm not ashamed to admit it - shrieked in delight like a 4 year old. I had so many dreams... surfing the web wherever and whenever I want, accessing my emails and playing web-games on my DS (oh the irony!). My excitement was short-lived.

Using the 'Opera' engine (the common mobile-phone web browser), I didn't expect miracles. I didn't expect Flash to work well (if at all) – but I was looking forward to a decent interface, flexibility and - most importantly - another platform for testing my own websites.

I first tested it at my parents' house on their WEP connection. It connected fine, and although the page-viewing is somewhat claustrophobic, it's to be expected with such a small screen. However, there are a few issues. Firstly, there are far too many steps for every activity – how many times do I have to scribble on the 'okay' symbol just to see google? “Why not set google as your home page?”, I hear you say... yes, that would be a good idea wouldn't it? I'll do that now – oh wait, it keeps rejecting the URL.

It has two basic modes – interactive (Small Screen Rendering – SSR) and 'overview'. The SSR mode is very odd - no CSS and strangely cluttered pages disappearing off the screen with scroll bars on the bottom and right of the window. Visually, overview is a little better – displaying pages pretty much exactly as they were intended. However, if you want to click on anything then you have to drag things around and it gets a bit complicated.

I'm sure that with a bit more time to play around with it, I may have found it easier. Of course there is a good reason for this not happening – when I tried to test the game at home, I found that it doesn't work with my perfectly standard WPA-personal connection. Oddly enough, my Nintendo Wii has no issue with it, but for some reason this basic function was omitted from the DS Browser software. If you know why, please leave a comment below.

Through all my daydreams of idealistic web-surfing, I did always wonder – why did it die out so quickly? Now I know...