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""'zxquzwq' - Are you sure?" "Yes." "285 points.""

If you are currently scratching your head wondering what on earth the tagline could possibly mean, then do not worry, all will be revealed. First, as is so often the case when an old lady bordering on senility starts to talk about games from her childhood, please allow me a moment of reminiscence. I will try to keep it brief and I think it's only fair that you should indulge me, given the fact that my taxes pay for your... whatever you do that my taxes pay for. Bribing government officials or whatever it is that you do instead of play Scrabble Deluxe on your Commodore 64.

Everyone knows that games which are specifically designed to teach children something without them noticing that they're learning rather than playing do not work. Children are not stupid, they're just small adults who have not grown yet and are therefore easy targets to be preached to by those who would like to make up for whatever shortcomings they may have. Scrabble is arguably one of the earliest examples of such a game (the board game - remember those? The things made of actual cardboard). Assembling letters to form new words is clearly an exercise in vocabulary expansion and therefore as far as most people are concerned, quite, quite dull.

However, the enduring charm of Scrabble is that human nature ensures that we are always trying to look smarter than everyone else, and this is a good way of doing so. Just as early man would rub his backside against trees and urinate publicly to display his Alpha Male characteristics, post-war ''we have no money so we're not going out ever ever again you hear me never ever again'' man would gather his family around the fire, smoke his pipe and make everyone play Scrabble. Possibly due to the lack of videogame consoles in those days, Scrabble was extremely popular. This popularity afforded it cult status, and this is perhaps at least in part why it has lasted so long through so many guises. Did you know that there are actual Scrabble championships? Really, there are. People compete at international level to come up with the best scoring words.

The basic premise is that this was the first computerized version of Scrabble. The game involves placing tiles marked with the letters of the alphabet onto a grid layout. Certain squares of the grid are marked for a points bonus, and you score points based on the combination of letters which you put down. To place the letters, you must make a word, and this is where the bloodlust part of the board game comes into play, when entire families are divided over some random aunt's completely fabricated non-word formulated due to her worryingly over-competitive streak and desire to humiliate all opposition. In the board game version, if someone invents a new word, you can hit them repeatedly about the head and demand that they take their turn again, or alternatively just have a quick look in the dictionary (although the latter is the less fun of the two options). In the C64 version, the computer asks ''Are you sure?'' to which you reply ''Yes.'' and it just gives you the points.

This is where the tagline comes from - it doesn't matter what mad combinations you place the letters in, or how blatantly obvious it is that you are lying, the computer just sits back and relies on your honesty. Presumably this is some sort of safety mechanism - knowing that it is unable to fight back due to a lack of available limbs (unless you bought the ''Super Ninja Legs'' peripheral for the system which does not exist and is available for purchase now!! at the low price of nothing and from nowhere), it simply sits back and lets you get on with it, thinking that if it passively accepts your word as truth, you may get bored of trying to pick a fight and just be honest about things. In all fairness, there was no choice really as far as this was concerned - the list of words recognised by the computer could hardly be exhaustive, as there will always be some smart-ass who knows of some obscure enzyme or other with a name no living being could dream of pronouncing unless they were afflicted with the world's worst cold and consequently full of mucous. But the pretension of bothering to ask you when you're clearly not going to say ''no'' was a cause of great amusement for me as a child, and the major draw of this game.

Scrabble Deluxe is innocent, inoffensive and utterly charming. It is an early release, so the graphics are nothing like what we're used to these days (and nothing more than basic even for the time) and the sound is tinny and irritating, but the mechanics of game play and the whole principle is just so sweet and unassuming that this is irresistible to play. I was too young to really appreciate this as anything more than one of those games that they use to try to make children learn when I first got it (I was around eight years old at the time), but now I see what it is that makes this so much fun. It isn't the action (there is none) and it isn't the word-play - it's the well-meaning innocence of good, clean fun.

Thanks to Scrabble Deluxe, I was able to gain some insight into what people did before there were any televisions, and that helped to foster an appetite for gaming which has persevered even to this day. Videogames may not be anything like board games on the face of it, but dig a little deeper and the similarities are apparent. And that is why I love Scrabble Deluxe.


Reviewer's Score: 8/10 | Originally Posted: 01/20/04