What is acroBabble?

It all started in the mid 90's with an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) game run by a bot called "Acrobot." The idea was simple: Players are presented with an acronym between 3 and 7 letters long and their task is to concoct the funniest, whackiest, witiest acronym expansion in the alloted time. Players then get to vote on the best entry and points are awarded based on the entries. The original idea for the game is attributed to Anthony Shubert which was subsequently developed by Mach and Eingang. The game could be played (and sometimes you still find a few players) in the #acro channel on popular IRC servers such as DALnet, EFnet, Starnet, Undernet, etc.

Acrophobia takes it Online

A few years later, a downloadable PC version of the game called Acrophobia was released by Bezerk (Berkeley Systems). Never before had such mindless creativity generated so much entertainment and fun! The game caught on quickly with its innovative use of graphics and voice prompts and in-game advertisements, creating a T.V. show like effect. The game exploded in popularity and people started to become addicted to Acrophobia. However, shortly after the Internet bubble burst, the game was taken down.

Acrophobia gets a Second Life

The Acrophobia game returned to popularity with an in-browser Applet version hosted and run by Uproar.com. However, this too was inexplicably abandoned after a few years. Despite many pleas to get Acrophobia back online, nothing has come to fruition. Since then acro fans have been organizing and playing through independently created versions of the acronym game.

The Age of Independents

Acrobabble is one such rendition of the game with its own twists and tweaks. The game is Flash based, which means it can run on the browser and on any operating system that supports Flash. It also means that the user interface is more interactive and fluid than what is possible with a Java Applet. The goal of acrobabble is to present a fully functional, immersive acronym game experience including music effects and voice prompts. If you have any suggestions to improve the game, please do post it in our forums.

Listed below are some of the higest voted acronyms. These are a testament to the creativity of the serious acro player. Check out the rules for scoring and register yourself to play. For your convenience, you can play acrobabble through social networks (Facebook, MySpace and Bebo) or register directly here. We also support OpenID login for AOL AIM. Our policy is to collect as little information as possible to register you. Enjoy!