The much-loved word game Scrabble made its move to the computer screen a couple years back. This new 1999 edition CD-ROM features a 3-D gameboard, easy to use controls, and a wealth of player options. Play Scrabble alone (against Maven, your computer opponent), side-by-side with human opponents, or through the Internet or a network.
Not all board games succeed on the computer screen -- some will make you scratch your head and ask why bother? However, Scrabble lends itself perfectly to the move, and in fact may make fans out of those who haven't yet warmed up to the game. Forget your Scrabble dictionaries -- Merriam Webster's Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary is in here, plus handy word lists that are easily accessed. Automatic scoring makes life a little easier too.
I have to admit that although I love word games in general, Scrabble never really appealed to me. However, after playing this CD-ROM, I have a hard time stopping. If a traditional game of Scrabble drags a little too long for your liking, try playing Maven (the Artificial Intellingence) in Scrabble CD-ROM -- her turn is instantaneous.
There are lots of ways to customize your game, as well as heaps of help in the form of word lists, a dictionary, in addition to hints and suggestions in various forms. In fact, clicking on Word Lists will bring up various options such as Anagrams, Stem Words, Q without U, Hook Words, JQXZ, Vowel Dump, Diagram, and Consonant Dump. [Cheating, I call it, but not all agree with me :)]
I wondered about playing side-by-side in multiplayer format -- after all, there is no way around being able to see your opponents' tiles. However, it actually works out quite fine. Players choose their replacement tiles only once their turn returns to them. Of course this "problem" (if indeed it could be considered a problem) is eliminated altogether in Internet games.
Scrabble Mini-Games will truly help improve your game. Scrabble CD-ROM contains a smart feature that involves Maven "observing" every game and mini-game played for each player. This means that any word used during gameplay will be used to automatically adjust the difficulty levels of the mini-games. Mini-games are as follows:
- Professor Maven: get an analysis from Maven who gives personalized hints and suggestions on how to improve your game.
- Review Games: view your last-played game turn by turn, and you will be told what you could have done to improve it.
- 2-Letter Words and 3-Letter Words: these games will help improve your vocabulary of these little words.
- Suffixes and Prefixes: a suffix or prefix is placed on the board, and it is up to you to form a complete word from your tiles.
- Word Placement: players are given a pre-generated game board and a word spelled out on your rack, and it is your job to find the most rewarding position on the board for that word.
- Best Play: a board is already set up for you, and you must find the best possible play from your given tiles.
- Anagrams: find as many words as you can from the given rack of tiles and improve your anagramming skills.
- Hook Words: create new words by adding a tile to an existing word on the board.
Bingos: you are given 7 tiles that spell a bingo.
Plenty of options are available to customize your game. You can opt to have your replacement tiles automatically picked for you, listen to a selection of songs for the duration of your game, choose to use timers, create a custom dictionary, select your type of tiles and backgrounds, and a whole lot more.
Kid testers had fun with this title, although they are at somewhat of a disadvantage. We would love to see a Scrabble Jr. CD-ROM in the future!
