Wordle Running On Game Boy Looks Like It Was Made For The Popular Handheld
The original Game Boy ranks Nintendo's second-most popular piece of gaming hardware to date, behind only the Nintendo DS. There have been nearly 119 million units sold of the ridiculous popular handheld, and over half a billion software unit sales. We have to think that both numbers could have been even higher had Wordle existed at the time.
Wordle is the viral word game hit that practically everyone is playing right now (and if you're not, you should be). Developer Josh Wordle created the game last year for his partner, an avid lover of crosswords, and himself to play, and it exploded in popularity last December. Then more recently, he sold the game to the New York Times for "an undisclosed price in the low seven figures."
There have been numerous clones and alternate takes on the popular word game, and it's also spurred a few interesting ports. Arguably the sweetest one to day is a port for the Game Boy by security researcher Stacksmashing. If you happen to still own a Game Boy system, you can download a free ROM of the game. You'll also need a cartridge to stick it on.
Barring that, you can play the Game Boy port in a web browser. You use the arrow keys to navigate the letters, the Alt key to select a letter, the Control key to go back a space, and the Enter key to, well, enter your guess.
WORDLE is now running on the Game Boy! pic.twitter.com/Zk8aDr7MST
— stacksmashing (@ghidraninja) February 6, 2022
Stacksmashing has made available to download Wordle ROMs for both the Game Boy and Analogue Pocket. There's also a GitHub page for the project.
"A nerdy detail: The ROM size is very limited, so I couldn't fit in a big wordlist of 'real' words. Instead I'm using a bloom filter to check (with, admittedly, currently a very high error-rate) whether an entered word is one of the 8,000 most common English words," they note.
Stacksmashing says they were inspired by a port of the Wordle for the Palm VII. And unlike the original version on the web, you're not limited to one game per day.
Speaking of which, you can hit up a Wordle archive over 200 previous games, and/or play one of these similar games...
- Lewdle: This game was created by Gary Whitta who is also known for Book of Eli, Rogue One, After Earth. The concept and the rules are the same as Wordle except all of the words are, well, lewd. This is obviously not a game you should play at work or around children.
- Absurdle: Do you find Wordle to just be a little too warm and friendly? Absurdle will purposely avoid giving you an answer. It encourages you to give up and guess random words.
- Dordle: One Wordle was just not good enough for you, was it? You play two Wordle clone boards at the same time in this game.
- Hello Wordl: This game is incredibly similar to Wordle but you can guess words between four and eleven letters in length. This adds a bit more of a challenge to your typical Wordle.
- Squirdle: This game is a little bit like Wordle but is for those who always loved the “Who's that Pokémon?” quiz that would appear in Pokémon episodes.
Thumbnail/Top Image courtesy of Stacksmashing
