Chronogamer

A small drawback is the fact that the whole screen blanks and flickers crazily when the VCS is thinking about its move. If you're the type of person that can suffer a seizure from certain types of flickering lights, I don't recommend you test yourself against this cart.

 

Atari needed to do something to show that the VCS was still alive, and that something needed to be doable with no RAM overhead and minimal CPU overhead. Having a pair of lines move outward and inward probably would have been good and wouldn't have required a whole lot of CPU overhead (basically the cost of a WSYNC for each move), but flashing colors was probably easier. A flashing vertical stripe might have been nicer than having the whole screen flash, though.

The only other of which I am aware is only being sold in Europe under the name of Schach for the Fairchild Channel F.

 

Do you have it? Might be interesting to let them play against each other and see which machine will win

I can attribute beating our chess club captain to this game.. No I wasn't in the chess club in school, but during study hall, he offered a challenge..

 

In addition to chess playing mode, there's a mode that allows a player to set up any kind of chess situation they'd like and then play it against the VCS. That's pretty cool.

 

I would spend hours setting up some off the wall configuration, sometimes with multiple queens and kings. I once tried to make a turn based football game as well.. Most often than not, the computer would just think about it forever, until I got bored and reset to try another configuration.. great game

The only other of which I am aware is only being sold in Europe under the name of Schach for the Fairchild Channel F.

 

Do you have it? Might be interesting to let them play against each other and see which machine will win

 

That's a great idea!!! Yeah, I've got both. I'll dust off the Fairchild and fire up Schach!

Atari needed to do something to show that the VCS was still alive, and that something needed to be doable with no RAM overhead and minimal CPU overhead.

I think the issue is more one of timing than CPU or RAM requirements. When the game is thinking of it's next move, it's going to take a variable number of cycles to complete a search. So when to hit VSYNC? Now, it might have been possible to wrap a chunk of code in a timer test + VSYNC, but that probably would have increased the time per move by 25-50%.

I think the issue is more one of timing than CPU or RAM requirements. When the game is thinking of it's next move, it's going to take a variable number of cycles to complete a search. So when to hit VSYNC? Now, it might have been possible to wrap a chunk of code in a timer test + VSYNC, but that probably would have increased the time per move by 25-50%.

 

Trying to maintain a vertically-positioned display would probably have been a 20% CPU hit if Atari didn't want to spend much code on it, but setting up four single-pixel sprites with HMxx values of $10, $20, $E0, and $F0 wouldn't take much code or time; any time the game finishes with a fair chunk of "thinking", it could STA WSYNC/STA HMOVE. A cost of about 40 cycles for every bit of thinking it does that's big enough to justify some motion.

My dad spent a lot of time on Video Chess when he first got the VCS. I remember beating it consistantly on the lowest levels. I once tried playing it on the highest level but I lost patience after only three or four moves (after two days I wanted to play some other games). My dad, who was a much better chess player than me, quickly learned to beat the VCS consistently on the higher levels. He would make a move and, while the VCS was figuring out its move, he would switch the TV tuner box and watch a show for a while. I don't think he really tried playing it on its highest level (pressure from my brother and me no doubt discouraged him). It wasn't long before he stopped playing chess on the VCS and played it on a portable electronic board he got one Christmas (you put real chess pieces on the electronic board and lights would blink telling you where the built-in computer made its move). Nowadays my dad plays chess on his laptop.

 

So, mezrabad, did you try playing Video Cess on its highest level?

(you put real chess pieces on the electronic board and lights would blink telling you where the built-in computer made its move).

 

So, mezrabad, did you try playing Video Cess on its highest level?

 

I tried but never had the attention span for it. It would've kicked my ass anyway, just more slowly and over a longer period of time than it did around level 4 back then. (Now it beats me at level 1)

 

A friend of mine had the electronic chess board you're talking about. My one "chess claim to fame" was that I could play an entire game on that thing without using any physical pieces. I wasn't a good enough chess player to ever beat it in that "mode", but my friends were always impressed with my ability to keep the whole game in my head. Actually, it was probably the only way I could beat my friends at chess; challenge them to a game of no-piece chess and watch them lose track of the board.

I could play an entire game on that thing without using any physical pieces

 

Whoa, really? That's kind of impressive!

 

Did you ever put the Channel F playing against the VCS? Probably one of the most boring experiments in the world, but if anyone did it, I'd like to know how it went.

 

EDIT: HAHA, I see you have an whole entry on the subject!

On 1/27/2013 at 10:14 PM, Nelio said:

Whoa, really? That's kind of impressive!

It really was kind of impressive (though again, I wasn't a very good Chess player). It was those sorts of memory tricks that frustrated the hell out of my parents because I was a mediocre student at best in high school. Decades later, it's clear now that I've always had ADHD and what I was doing then was "hyperfocus". Meaning, if I thought it would impress someone I cared about impressing, I could hyperfocus in the moment, or even over several moments. The less I cared about impressing anyone, the less I found myself able to concentrate on anything.

 

There's mostly no flicker, with the exception of the cursor. Think about that for a minute. 32 chess pieces, every type of piece is distinct, identifiable and none of them flickers. The cursor flickers, but that's okay; cursors are supposed to flicker.

 

This is impressive and practical though easy to see how it was done. I truly love how each piece is readily identifiable. No one piece looks like the other and that means no distractions trying to figure out what's what.

 

I would like to see a text menu and many many more chess options and games and variations. Nothing need be done with the game board. It. Just. Works.