"If glitches and imperfections aggravate you, stay away from this game."

Sorry!/Aggravation/Scrabble Junior is one of many 3-in-1 packs of digital board game renditions for Game Boy Advance. For $10, this game may seem like a bargain, but you can get an idea of how much effort was put into it when you see the title screen that is obviously recycled for all of these 3-in-1 games – there are obvious references to Risk, Clue, Battleship, Connect Four, and other games not included in this pack. While the games are far from being unplayable, there are some annoyances that eventually add up.

All games feature good-looking graphics, although Sorry! and Aggravation are both shown at an angle with a background behind them, and the backgrounds are rather plain and ugly. Other than that, everything looks as it should. This game has a nice option to play multiplayer with only a single system, passing it around between players, instead of requiring multiple systems like most games nowadays. I'm glad the developers included this option, although the trade-off is that there is no multi-system option.

The first game in this collection is Sorry!. As you likely know, the idea behind Sorry! is to move four pawns around a game board from start to home. Players take turns picking up cards to see how far they will be able to move one pawn. The cards can show a number between one and twelve, or the word "sorry". Drawing a one or two will let you remove one of your pawns from start, and a "sorry" card will let you move one of your pawns from start to any space occupied by an opponent's pawn, knocking them back to their starting space. Some cards have special effects; for instance, an eleven will let you trade places with someone else, while a four will make you move backward!

The second game is Aggravation. While Sorry! only allows up to four players, Aggravation allows up to six. Like Sorry!, Aggravation challenges you to be the first player to move from start to home. A dice is used to determine how far you can move in this game. You must roll a one or a six to exit the starting area, and rolling a six at any time will let you immediately roll again. Once again, landing on a space that's already occupied will send the original occupant back to their starting space. Once again, there are "shortcuts" than can be used to your advantage. If you roll the right number, you can move to a special space in the middle. You must roll a one to leave the space, but when you do, you can move very close to your home area! If you land on the other spaces nearest this center space, you can jump around these spaces to get around the board quickly.

The conversions of these games share a lot of similarities. For one thing, you must always have the maximum possible number of players. You can select how many human players will play, but every vacancy will be filled by a CPU player. For another thing, your color is always selected for you, and is the same every time. This isn't a big deal, but it would've been nice if they had included an option to change your color.

Both games have background music that really doesn't fit them well. They also have some annoying sound effects. Fortunately, there is an option to turn either or both of these off if you can't stand them.

While the recreations of these games are pretty accurate, they do leave something to be desired. There are some rule changes in these games. For instance, in Sorry!, if you draw a 10 but can't move 10 spaces forward, you usually have to move one space backward (if possible) instead. In this version, you don't even get the option to move backward if you can't move forward 10 spaces. In Aggravation, you shouldn't be able to move one of your marbles past another, but apparently the developers of this game didn't like that rule.

What's worse than the rule changes in these games, though, is the glitches. Sorry! is especially glitch-filled. Seemingly at random, somebody's pawn may be moved into home when they should be sent to start or to another space. When using a sorry card, you might be sent to an unoccupied space, while a pawn from the other side of the board is sent to start. Sometimes, a pawn can even become trapped in a different player's start area! In Aggravation, sometimes the game lets two marbles occupy the same space. Other times, it won't let you make a move, even though the move is perfectly valid and normally recognized.

Another annoyance is the lack of the ability to select certain moves. In Sorry!, you have no control over which opponent to target when you draw a Sorry card or switch places. The game automatically chooses the pawn closest to your home and targets it. While this may be what you would do in most instances, anyway, it could potentially alter the outcome of the game by preventing you from targeting someone who is close to victory! In Aggravation, if you have the right number of moves to enter the space in the middle, the game forces you to go there, whereas you might prefer not to risk it in some cases.

So, now that we've covered Sorry! and Aggravation, let's take a look at the third game, Scrabble Junior. This game includes the option to play with only two or three players, unlike the other games in this compilation. Like the others, this game also has an option to disable the sound effects and/or music.

Scrabble Junior features two modes: an "easy game", and an "advanced game". The easy game is completely different from traditional Scrabble. At the start of the game, each player is given seven tiles, each with a letter on it. For every tile a player uses, they receive a replacement, until there are no more tiles left to hand out. A game board is displayed with a number of words displayed in a crossword puzzle-like fashion. Your goal is to place letter tiles on the board that match the letters shown. The catch is that you can only place tiles in the first available space nearest the beginning of a word. You score by placing the tile that finishes a word, and the player who finishes the most words throughout the game is the winner. If it's possible for you to place a tile somewhere, you HAVE to place one, so you can't just refuse to build on a word so that someone else can't finish it. You are able to see other players' tiles, so you can try to delay their finishing a word if you have multiple options for which tile to put where.

The advanced game will be more familiar if you're used to traditional Scrabble. In the advanced game, you are given seven tiles at the beginning, just as you are in the easy game. As you use your tiles, you are given replacements until there are no tiles left. This time, the goal is to use your letter tiles to spell out words on an empty game board. The first player must build a word near the center of the board. From there, other players must attach letters to existing words so that new words are made incorporating previously played letter tiles. You get points for every letter you put down, as well as every letter that forms part of your word, even if you aren't the one who put it there. The game continues until everyone uses up all of their tiles, or until every player in sequence is unable to make a move.

As with the easy game, the advanced game allows you to see every other player's tiles. This is one of the differences this game has from original Scrabble. This game also allows a lot of things that are against the rules in the original game, such as using abbreviations and some words from other languages. I'm not sure whether this is another rule change implemented by the developers of this conversion, or whether that's how it's supposed to work in Scrabble Junior, as I've never played the board game version of Scrabble Junior.

The music in this game isn't anything too outstanding, but it's more fitting than the music for Sorry! and Aggravation. The main menu music is a "kiddy-sounding" theme, which I guess is fitting since this is Scrabble Junior. The easy game has a calm tune, which also sounds rather "kiddy". The advanced game has a more serious-sounding and less kiddy-sounding background tune. The sound effects in this game are also less irritating than the sound effects in the other two games. As I mentioned earlier, this game also has the option to turn off the music and/or sound effects if they get on your nerves.

So, what's the verdict on this 3-in-1 pack? All three games are no-frills recreations of the board games, and two of them include some imperfections and bugs. I've seen more effort put into freeware board game-to-video game conversions. Nonetheless, if you want these games in portable form, and you don't mind their flaws, you'll probably find it worth the $10 it sells for. For everyone else, you can probably find freeware versions of these games for your PC that are just as good, if not better.

Scoring:
Gameplay: 6.6
Story: 0.0
Graphics: 8.8
Sound: 5.1
Longevity & Replay Value: 5.0
Average Score: 5.1
Actual Score: 4.6 rounded to 5 (mediocre)

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/26/06