How to play Boggle online
- Choose letters: arrow keys
- Finish the current word: Space bar
- Start a game: F12 (the consoleās Reset switch). When the game starts, some letters may be missing from the grid; press F12 a few more times until all of them appear.
- Second player: if the game expects the second joystick, use T/F/G/H to move and A to finish a word
Gameplay
As in the board game, a four-by-four grid of letters is shuffled at the start. You build words by picking letters with the joystick and press the button when a word is done. Each turn lasts 99 seconds, and you can enter up to eight words in that time. Longer words score more: a three-letter word is worth 1 point, a four-letter word 2 points, and so on.
Boggle is a game for two players only, taking turns. The word āGOā appears under the score of the player whose turn it is. There is no computer opponent, and the cartridge cannot check whether a word is real, so the players have to judge each otherās words, just as you would at the kitchen table.
Why Boggle was never released
Crane wrote the game in only 2K of program memory. That limit explains the eight-word cap, and according to Crane a computer opponent was never planned, because almost all early 2600 games were made for two players. To fit enough letters on the screen he used the so-called āVenetian blindsā technique, a trick for showing more objects than the hardware normally allows.
The game never got beyond the working demo stage. Boggle belonged to Parker Brothers, so Atari would have needed a licence. AtariProtos reports that Atari had not licensed game ideas before and did not think a word game would reach enough players to make it worthwhile. Crane later left Atari and co-founded Activision.
