Battle Chess Original

[Mireille Kreines]

BattleChess is a video game version of chess with 2.5D graphics and fighting animations showing the result of one piece moving onto the square of another. It was developed and released by Interplay Entertainment for the Amiga in 1988 and ported to many other systems, including the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, Acorn Archimedes, Amiga CD32, Amiga CDTV, Apple IIGS, Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, FM Towns, Nintendo Entertainment System, MacOS, PC-98, X68000, and Microsoft Windows. In 1991, Battle Chess Enhanced was released by Interplay for IBM PC compatibles and Macintosh with improved VGA graphics and a symphonic musical score played from the CD-ROM.

Battle Chess follows the same rules as traditional chess, with pieces moving in an animated fashion and battles playing out so that the capturing piece defeats its target. Furthermore, when checkmate is delivered, the checkmating piece fights and defeats the king. Since there are six types of pieces for each color, and a king cannot check (let alone capture) another king, there are a total of 35 different battle animations.[2] The rook, for example, turns into a rock monster and kills a pawn by smashing its head, and the rook kills the queen by eating her. There are some pop-culture homages; the knight versus knight animation references the black knight fight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the king versus bishop fight pastiches the short battle between Indiana Jones and a swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The game can be also played in a 2D version with no animations, and the Amiga CDTV version has a fully voiced introduction describing the movements of the pieces for the benefit of beginners. Digitized sound is used in the MS-DOS version for all battle sound effects and is played through the PC speaker, without the need for a sound card, using a technique akin to RealSound.

Battle Chess can be played against a human opponent (by hotseat, null modem or over a local area network in some ports) or against the computer's artificial intelligence (AI).[2] The game has an opening library of over 30,000 moves (which were not available for the Commodore 64 and Apple II versions).

Battle Chess producer and Interplay's founder Brian Fargo expressed his fondness for the game in a 2006 interview, although he added that he did not think there would be much of an audience for it today.[3]

An apocryphal story of the development was the invention of "The Duck" (an example of Parkinson's law of triviality): The producers of the game were known to demand changes to the game, presumably to make their mark on the finished product. To this end, one animator added a small duck around the queen piece, but made sure that the sprite would be easily removable. Come review, the producers, predictably, okayed everything but asked for the duck to be removed.[4]

Ken St. Andre reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World, and stated that "Quibbles aside, every chess player will want a copy of this program, and every Amiga owner owes it to him/herself to see Battlechess in action. Highly recommended."[2]

The Amiga version received favourable reviews from magazines due to its comical battle sequences which were advanced (for the time) in terms of graphics, animation and sound. German game magazine ASM, however, criticized the weak chess AI.[13] In a review of the 3DO version, Mike Weigand of Electronic Gaming Monthly stated, "If you are a chess fan, then you may want to check this title out."[8]

In 1994 Computer Gaming World said of the remake, Battle Chess Enhanced, that "Better artwork, smoother animations, and a much stronger chess algorithm than its disk predecessors make the CD version a good buy".[14]

Interplay won "Best Graphics Achievement In A Non-Graphics Product" from Software Publishers Association (later renamed to Software and Information Industry Association) for Battle Chess.[15] In 1994 Computer Gaming World added it to the magazine's Hall of Fame honoring those games rated highly over time by readers, describing Battle Chess as "a showcase product for the first level of multimedia standards".[16] In 1996 the magazine ranked it as the 106th-best game of all time for its "funny, elaborate animated sequences and spectacular special effects."[17]

On December 28, 2015, Brian Fargo revealed that he had started working on a second sequel of the game titled Battle Chess 3 in the late 1990s but the game was cancelled. He also released a footage of the prototype of the game.[22][23]

One similar game, titled Battle vs. Chess, was developed by TopWare Interactive for "just about every platform".[27] However, Interplay filed and won an injunction for trademark infringement in 2010 and TopWare was prevented from releasing Battle vs. Chess in the United States.[28]The District Court of California came into session and given that after two years of litigation, TopWare Interactive discharged their lawyer, resulting in Interplay winning the case by default.[29] Topware afterwards released the game in North America with the name Check vs. Mate.

In 2012 Subdued Software launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund an updated version of Battle Chess.[30] Although the campaign was unsuccessful, the game was ultimately published by Interplay under the name Battle Chess: Game of Kings and released on Steam in 2015.[31] On whatoplay.com it has a rating of 4.9/10.[32]

For reasons I don't quite understand, I have decided to learn Chess. This ancient, complex boardgame is more accessible than ever thanks to a glut of internet resources and hundreds of digital versions featuring smart, challenging AI.

I started to get the better at beating the basic novice AI, trying to hold in my head the differences between the 'queen's gambit accepted' and 'queen's gambit declined' openings. In the midgame I could just about fumble my way to victory with some improvisation. Afterwards I watched some grandmaster games with commentary, and started to understand what an extraordinary game Chess is. I began to appreciate the huge amount of learning and experience needed to get good at it.

So I baulked. When you're at the bottom of the mountain the climb can seem impossible. I needed to soften the challenge, so I turned to a small subspecies of the grand old game: battle chess. There have been many variations on this concept, which equips pieces with close combat animations as they take each other off the board.

1988's original classic Battle Chess is available on Steam for just a few bucks, but I wanted something modern, with a bit of gore, and with big Orks in it. Warhammer 40,000: Regicide fit perfectly, and it has been a great palette cleanser between bouts of trying to learn the game seriously.

You can play classic Chess with Space Marines if you like, but you're more likely to find high level AI in dedicated chess games. Instead it's Regicide mode that has provided amusement between bouts of reading articles on efficient early game development.

Regicide has all the familiar pieces, but now all your pawns can shoot. I enjoy directing them to snap fire at the enemy line and open up holes in the enemy defense. Proper Chess moves serve as instakill attacks, so if you move your queen (a Space Marine librarian in this case) to take a piece diagonally, your librarian will walk up to an Ork and zap them into chunks immediately. Strong pieces have special abilities like "Only War", which can buff the defence of nearby pieces.

It's so silly, and even though you win by checkmating your opponent's king (an Ork warboss or a Space Marine captain, depending on who you play as), it's not really Chess. But it's Chess-adjacent enough to reset my brain and inspire me to get back into the proper theory again. One day I'll make an account on Chess.com and start facing real players. Until then, I'm going to checkmate Orks until I know some fundamentals.

Battle Chess is a quite typical chess game, but it comes with a twist: all pieces are represented by small, realistic figures that walk around on the chessboard, and when one piece takes another, they both take part in an animated battle. There is a different animation for each permutation, depending on which pieces are capturing or being captured. You can also play in 2D without animation.

The game's opening library includes 30,000 different moves, ensuring a variety of games will unfold across the 10 skill levels.

Multi-player support can be extended to modem and/or serial port play.

Battle Chess follows the same rules as traditional chess; the battles always play out so that the capturing piece defeats its target. Since there are six types of pieces for each color, and a king cannot capture a king, there are 35 battle animations. The rook, for example, turns into a rock monster and kills a pawn by smashing his head. There are some pop-culture homages; the knight versus knight animation references the black knight fight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail , and the king versus bishop fight pastiches the short battle between Indiana Jones and a swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Battle Chess is a quite typical chess game, but it comes with a twist: all pieces are represented by small, realistic figures that walk around on the chessboard, and when one piece takes another, they both take part in an animated battle. There is a different animation for each permutation, depending on which pieces are capturing or being captured. You can also play in 2D without animation.

The game can be also played in a 2D version with no animations, and the Amiga CDTV version features a fully voiced introduction describing the movements of the pieces for the benefit of beginners. Digitized sound is utilized in the DOS version for all battle sound effects and is played through the PC speaker, without the need for a sound card, using a technique akin to RealSound.

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