Post by mrjayden on Jan 19, 2023 3:59:33 GMT
On May 30th, 2001, Bejeweled Deluxe was released. As I'm sure all of you already know, it became a smash hit. They had a machine that made a "ka-ching" sound whenever someone bought the deluxe version, but soon they had to turn it off because tons of people were buying the game. Microsoft owned the rights to the name "Bejeweled", but they agreed to give the name to PopCap in exchange for the ability to make advertisement versions of the game. This resulted in a ton of advertising versions of Bejeweled made in Adobe Flash, almost all of which are already archived in BlueMaxima's Flashpoint (except for the Smirnoff Ice version, which is still lost).
With Bejeweled becoming such a huge success, a follow-up was sure to happen. And it did, in the form of Bejeweled 2, which was released on November 5th, 2004.
But there was a lesser-known title made in the interim: Bespelled Deluxe.
This was a game where you attempted to make words by linking letter tiles. If you made a word, a wizard on the left side of the screen would remove the letter tiles.
If the gameplay sounds familiar to you, that's because PopCap would later release Bookworm, a game that has identical gameplay, but a different theme.
While Bookworm is still readily available, Bespelled Deluxe has almost been lost to time. The only surviving footage of the game comes from a Let's Play from the YouTube user Gage Brown. Not even the MSN Games page is archived on the Wayback Machine. MSN Games has long since stopped selling the game, and no other websites have the game available for download.
Luckily, Gage Brown posted a link to the trial version of the game. mega.nz/file/X1MHlDzS#dKh31i11E-qXO_L19WKkNW8cX_HYhVUSl1ZMGKdKOy0
However, the full version of the game is still lost. I did find a website claiming to have a serial key for the game, but I tried it and the key didn't work. Hopefully someone is able to remove the trial so that the full version of the game can be played once again.
