How to play Hangman online
- Cycle through the alphabet: up arrow goes from A towards Z, down arrow goes backwards from Z
- Enter the letter shown: Space bar
- Player 2: T and G to cycle the letters, A to enter
- Start a new game: F12 (the consoleās Reset switch)
- Choose a game (1ā9): F11 (the consoleās Select switch)
- Time limit on or off: F4 (Player 1 difficulty) and F9 (Player 2 difficulty)
Gameplay
A row of blanks at the bottom of the screen shows how many letters the hidden word has ā never more than six. The alphabet appears one letter at a time on the right; scroll to the one you want and press the button. A correct letter fills every blank where it belongs. A wrong one adds a piece to the monkey in the top left corner and drops out of the alphabet, so you canāt pick it twice. After eleven wrong guesses the word is revealed.
In the one-player games you score a point for each word you solve, and the computer scores a point for each word you miss. In the two-player games the first player to reach five points wins.
Game variations and switches
The cartridge holds 510 words, sorted into four vocabulary levels. There are nine games:
- Games 1ā4: one player against the computer. Game 1 uses first-to-third-grade words, Game 2 first-to-sixth grade, Game 3 up to ninth grade and Game 4 up to high school level.
- Games 5ā8: the same four levels for two players, taking turns on the computerās word and sharing the eleven wrong guesses. A correct letter earns another turn, and whoever completes the word scores.
- Game 9: one player enters a word of up to six letters while the other looks away, then the other guesses it. You swap roles each round.
The difficulty switch adds a time limit. In position A you have 20 seconds to choose each letter; in position B you can take as long as you like.
Tips
- Start with vowels and common letters. E, A, O, T and S fill in most short words quickly.
- Scroll the short way. For letters late in the alphabet, pull down to go backwards from Z instead of stepping through from A.
- In Game 9, to type the same letter twice (as in āBOOKā), move off the letter and back onto it before you press the button again.
History
Hangman came out in October 1978. Alan Miller was one of Atariās first 2600 designers; his other games include Surround and Basketball. Like many early Atari cartridges it was also sold by Sears under its Tele-Games label, as Spelling, which is why this page carries both names.
Reviewers at the time were not impressed. The British magazine TV Gamer called it poor value because it added so little to the paper version, and The Book of Atari Software 1983 called it a nice version of the classic game but criticised the graphics. Played today, it works best as a relaxed two-player game or as spelling practice for children.
