#20: Battle Chess (Interplay, Amiga, 1988/1989)

Of course, the AI in Battle Chess is not quite on the level of a destroyer of worlds. It would not defeat the greatest of human chess players, though I fear it is enough to defeat me. A fundamental change to the game of chess is occurring in the world, but Battle Chess is merely a representative of a larger cultural shift in the perception of the game. It is not actually doing much of anything to affect that change by itself. But there is an altogether more subtle change to the game that Battle Chess actually is an active participant in.

As I mentioned, there is a unique animation for each combination of one piece taking another. Now, these animations certainly have some level of entertainment value, though how much is certainly up for debate. But they also serve to considerably slow down the process of actually playing a game of chess. Simply put, if all you are after is a computer simulation of chess, there were many far better options available for purchase. So we must take it as read that the chief appeal of Battle Chess is in its animations. Which means that the win condition for the player necessarily changes from putting his opponent in checkmate to unlocking each and every animation the game has to offer.

As an intellectual exercise, players of chess in the physical world have probably engineered situations in which a pawn causes a checkmate, but it’s hard to imagine that anyone has ever gone out of their way to make sure that a bishop takes a knight, for example. And ultimately, this fundamental change to the way that chess is played, this change from playing to complete a single win condition to playing to exhaustively achieve every possible task that the game can offer, will have far reaching implications outside of mere chess. This mode of play will spread throughout the world of video games and swallow it whole. That is the true legacy of Battle Chess. And I for one welcome our new robot overlords.