Until now, Scrabble has generally been reserved for days when you're stuck inside during the British summer holidays when it's raining. But the little game with the letter tiles has made it onto the Game Boy, so now you can have all of that scrabbly goodness in the palm of your hand. As well as the standard game--where you get some letters, make spellings up and then shout "what do you mean there's no such word as QXZYJHD?", there is also a conundrum round where you and your opponents get the same seven letters and have to arrange them into a word.
You can play against up to three other players (either computer players or friends--although you'll all have to use the same machine as the game doesn't make use of the link cable). If you play against the computer you can choose a difficulty level--Novice, Easy, or Hard--and the pictorial representation of the opponent changes depending on which level you play, from a man with a dunce's hat to the expert who looks like Einstein. It's a nice touch which gives you the impression of playing against someone rather than just the computer AI.
There are also various options you can choose to spice up play: you can set "word challenge" to on so that your opponent can dispute a word you put down (otherwise the dictionary will do it automatically when you place your tiles; the intelligence of this changes as you go up difficulty levels), and you can also turn off the "miss a turn" function when you get a word wrong. It's very simple to pick up and play, and the board is reproduced in the original colours. Basically, this is a very addictive game for people of all ages. --Kristen Bowditch
