Battle Chess - ADG Episode 336

[@LGR]

Every single musical note and sound effect is forever seared into my psyche… one of the very first commercial computer games I was ever exposed to

[@AirknightTails]

Hey dude. Hope things are getting better for you dude

[@hadeishadeis7462]

Yes one of my first PC games to be exposed to. Spend so many hours trying to get every animation to play without having the chess skills to properly do it. As a medieval re-enactor I've re-enacted many a fight from this game (or in one case the holy grail)

[@lutfimakarim8258]

LGR, ADG, CGR, PUR, MJR... All my fave gaming channels are 3 letter acronyms. 😂

[@pinguino3554]

When I was 9 years old, I learned how to play chess with this game. Two years later, I participated in my first chess tournament and won (though the level was quite low since it was a school-age tournament). I had never played on a real board before that tournament. When people asked me who taught me to play, I replied, 'I learned with the computer,' and they were so confused.

[@jellymop]

I remember this game growing up. My grandma used that old computer until about 12 years ago until she passed. She lives with us in the last few years. We kept this computer from like 1993 that my dad was coaxed into buying to keep up with the times at the time. He was still learning the joys of Microsoft Windows 3.1 (I think) before he passed when I was a really tiny man. I had a blast with that computer and played Doom (and quit because it was too scary), Wolfenstein, the cat and mouse game with the cheese up until about 2006. I remember being enamored with the “Icon Hear It” application and exploring the animations and sounds. I had such a blast with battle chess. It was the animation when you overtook a space that I couldn’t get enough of as a little dude.

[@Sweetestsadist]

"Rook takes queen" in this game is one of the best surprises in gaming.

[@remarkablehairdo3110]

Me and my friend used to go to the library just to play this on their computers

[@Novastar.SaberCombat]

Archon and Archon: Adept blew these away by a landslide. 💪😎✌️ That was when EA was simply 3-6 people, and the logo was still the square, circle, and triangle.

[@ianeborn6823]

Okay, now, that "pawn takes king" animation was cute! XD Ah, this is such a nostalgic game for me! I'm really glad to see it covered here--and just to get to see the old animations and screens again! ^_^ Fun fact: much later there would be another "chess with animated pieces battling it out" game, simply called " _Combat Chess_ ". It didn't have the charm of _Battle Chess_ --for me, at least--but it did have some cool points. For example, the "pawns" were wyvern-like creatures, referred to as "Preternatural Agamiddian Winged Neoraptors". ^_^ As to the outro, many thanks for bringing us on this lovely ride through DOS gaming! And I hope that 2025 treats you well! ^_^

[@AnnCatsanndra]

Yoooo, absolutely ICONIC!

[@IllidanS4]

Oh I remember this game well, though EGA and without sounds. Best chess game of the era. As a kid I always hoped for the pieces to defend themselves sometimes.

[@verysoftwares]

this game has excellent animation.

[@Pixelmusement]

Probably flows better on the Amiga where it originated seeing as every time it plays a digitized effect over the PC Speaker all visuals grind to a halt. :P

[@rhydiangalindo8939]

the animation was futuristic

[@verysoftwares]

@@Pixelmusement I'm kinda fond of that effect, gives strategic pauses to the gameplay.

[@scotty74065]

Happy holidays Kris, have a good time. Ah yes Battle Chess, one of the games we got with our first PC. Played around much with it, although the animations most of the time got us to play a rather capturing heavy "strategy".

[@sacredbanana]

This was one of my childhood games on my Commodore Amiga 500. Fun fact, the Amiga CDTV version of this game has a tutorial sequence where all the pieces have voice acting and they introduce themselves and explain how they can move. Another fun fact is the Amiga and Atari ST versions are so alike that if you connect a null modem cable between an Amiga and an Atari ST you can have multiplayer battlechess cross platform. If you set each machine to be computer controlled instead of human controlled you can sit back and watch a match between the Amiga vs the Atari

[@Pixelmusement]

You know, if the Amiga and Atari ST versions are cross-compatible over a modem connection, I have to imagine that may also still be the case with other ports... :o

[@sacredbanana]

@@Pixelmusement someone really needs to explore this haha

[@sacredbanana]

interestingly this also worked between amiga and Atari in Lotus Turbo Challenge II which is cool because its realtime racing instead of just a turn based game

[@gregwtmtno5437]

The holidays don’t start till Kris takes his break. Happy holidays and see you next year!

[@JoeBee9]

I had this as a kid and loved it. I remember trying to get a newer version of this working but my computer wouldn't run it as it required a bizarre memory configuration.

[@Pixelmusement]

Probably needed EMS instead of XMS. Getting EMS going on a system with XMS was easy IF you knew how, but nearly impossible otherwise as it was never well documented. :P

[@RatelHBadger]

I LOVED seeing the animations for this back in the day. It didn't matter how slow moving the pieces were, it made chess enjoyable.

[@Cloudschatze]

The VGA version can be started with an optional, "/ducks" command-line parameter for... a little something extra.

[@Pixelmusement]

Well, I tried it out and... I can't say I understand WHY that command line parameter does that, or why it even exists, but I guess that's a thing you can do. :P

[@TheGerkuman]

​@@Pixelmusement I would assume it's a silly in-joke.

[@Compucles]

@@Pixelmusement Once of the changes is that the cursor for when you are in check changes to a check mark with a duck. Anyway, this is pretty cool and now my default way to play.

[@laser8550]

1:00 giving the opponent a free piece with the 3rd move of the game ' Not a great plan'

[@lilwyvern4]

Someone spent a lot of time on the way the queen moves. And boy am I glad he did.

[@theSoundCarddatabase]

Thanks for going deeper about the different versions. I remembered mine as having more color than CGA, but less than regular VGA. Possibly what I had was the strange VGA "16-colour" version you mentioned, since I don't remember having a choice of graphics.

[@johnroscoe2406]

I played this as a good BEFORE I actually learned the basics about chess, and always got mad that "my guys never win!"

[@LemonRush7777]

Oh man I played this so much when I was a kid. Loved the animations. A pity I always sucked hard at chess.

[@Penti586]

I remember one of my cousins playing this game when I was little; I didn't know how chess worked, but had fun watching her play and seeing all the wacky animations

[@tjeerdnet]

I remember seeing this game at a friend's place somewhere around 1990 on a 80286 with a VGA graphics card. For that time it was beautiful. Although being 10 years old around that time we didn't have the patience to play this game together, I really don't remember us playing it that much. But again, for that time the sound, animations and graphics were on the high end compared to other games.

[@pelimies1818]

Just last week I wittnessed mate with pawn, in Eric Rosen's chess channel. Rare, yes, but there is so many games going on, it will happen frequently. Just like quads in poker.

[@Compucles]

It's the Muggle version of Wizard's Chess!

[@Davtwan]

Plenty of animations although the common captures will play so often that the novelty will probably wear off quickly for most folks that are not interested in exploring chess further. Still, this one is a classic. I know there’s a modern version for mobile(?) with new animations and even giving extra animations for the same types of captures. (The checkmate-by-pawn animation there is clever too.) People just love imaging their pieces duking it out. :)

[@TheMoogleMaster]

The one I had was Battle Chess 3000 with the sci-fi theme.

[@DFuxa]

This raises the question: how well studied are you on chess openings?

[@Pixelmusement]

Enough to know that when I play against real people (who are never Chess experts) they routinely bring out their knights right away and I try not to do that because it's just too predictable. :P

[@d3v-z3r0]

I have learned the basic rules of Chess with the Amiga version of this game.

[@SomeOrangeCat]

This is the game that made me want a PC.

[@PlayStationPaul]

I'd say this was more for casual chess players. Serious players would probably find it too slow and gimmicky once the novelty of the animations had worn off.

[@Compucles]

There are more options for more serious players in "Battle Chess 4000."

[@Compucles]

There's also "Battle Chess 4000" if you prefer sci-fi animated chess battles instead.

[@bradboggess9347]

I remember that! The knights kind of resemble Buzz Lightyear.

[@johngleeman8347]

The rook's movement is orthogonal. That's the easier way of saying "vertical or horizontal."

[@Pixelmusement]

Depending... I mean, I have an excellent vocabulary but if I condensed my explanations into the most eclectic and discrete dialect I am capable of verbalizing it would reduce recognition of these abstracted applications. Or in other words: No one's gonna f____ing understand me. ;D

[@jasonblalock4429]

@@Pixelmusement Incessantly eschew obfuscation!

[@miciso666]

i always loved the space one :D

[@aetherspoon]

This game (well, the NES version) is what got me into chess when I was a young kid. The NES version didn't have a timer limit, so on max difficulty you could just wait forever for it to make a move. We considered that the computer resigning. :)

[@Pixelmusement]

It probably did have a limit, but we can do some basic math to determine how long a move on Level 9 might take: On the PC, which at the time would've been around 8 MHz on the low end, a move would've taken around 40 minutes on average. The NES CPU is about 1/6th as powerful, so multiply 40 by 6 and you get 240, which is four hours. That said, the game DOES have a feature where you can interrupt the CPU thinking process and force it to make a move. :B

[@bluekewne]

​@@Pixelmusementhmm, I wonder if the NES version really does take 4 hours on hardest difficulty - I think a test with Retroarch's fast forward is needed :P

[@fastbreak333]

I hear there's a modern version that has everything in 3D and it still pretty much has the same animations and tutorial. I guess don't fix what isn't broken?

[@seanlavoie2]

The Enhanced CD-Rom (I believe) had a fantastically amusing tutorial that I think was hosted by the rook. The version I got came with the CD-ROM drive (using a caddy) and a bunch of other disks including 7th Guest

[@mrtyler603]

Fun fact, your s tratagey is also what this one grandmaster did because he hated how most people only just remembered chess as a series of instructions to follow to make the most optimized moves so he'd purposely not use any of the well known openings

[@Z098]

The sound affects seem off to me. I have played this many times on real hardware and dos box.

[@Pixelmusement]

DOS emulation is not really perfected yet and PC Speaker sound output is definitely one of the trickier things to get EXACTLY right. I'm running in the base version of DOSBox but it's possible one of the forks like X or ECE produce more accurate sound in regards to this program. :B

[@negirno]

@@Pixelmusement I think this is because the real physical PC Speaker sounded different depending on which type of speaker is used what was the acoustics of the PC case, etc.

[@bradboggess9347]

There is also a Star Wars themed Battle Chess game. The animations are entertaining for a while, then they get repetitious, and I switch to the 2d mode. I made a DOS shareware strategy game long ago that was a pun on this title, but it had nothing to do with chess.

[@Pixelmusement]

I believe a number of the battle animations in the Star Wars themed version are actually borrowed from the original Battle Chess. Not all of them, but more than just a couple. :B

[@solsticeprojekt1937]

I know you get notifications for comments on videos, so I'm posting this here. A day early, but I do what I can. I wish you a merry christmas, Kris and hope you're having a good time! Unless, of course, you don't want that and rather side with "bah, humbug" while watching Dickens' Christmas Carol ... but the version with Bill Murray. : - )

[@Pixelmusement]

Two days early as far as my timezone is concerned. Ending the year with literally only $20 of spare cash and the rest tied up in bills, but the food's been good as both my Mother and Sister have been hosting parties for family, and I've been making good progress on gamedev stuff. :B

[@megamanfan3]

10:30 I guess that means setting the AI to that level gives it Chessmaster 2000 intelligence.

[@SteveMacSticky]

I think I am used to the PC speaker sounds used instead of the normal sound

[@Compucles]

Thanks for the tip on the cycles setting. It was unusually sloppy of GOG to mess up such an simple setting in their optimization process.

[@Pixelmusement]

Why, what was it set to in the GOG release by default? I have a physical copy so I don't actually know... :o

[@Compucles]

@@Pixelmusement The default setting is "auto." Now that I've switched it to "30000" both it and "Battle Chess 4000" run much better, just as you said.

[@Pixelmusement]

@@Compucles Right. Leaving it on auto will make it more authentic to the experience you would get playing it back when it was new, but naturally a higher cycles count will make it more snappy and responsive. :B

[@Compucles]

@@Pixelmusement You said it yourself that without a fixed cycle count it actually runs slower than it did originally. I'm also pretty sure that the animations weren't programmed to slow down to a snail's pace during portions of the midgame.

[@Pixelmusement]

@@Compucles No no, I said auto makes it run "perfectly fine, at least from the perspective of playing it back on an older computer", as in, the auto setting would produce the most authentic experience, not necessarily the best depending on what you're going for. I also added that for this video I was playing the game "at a low fixed cycles count" which I didn't mean to do thus why the animations were a little slower than they normally should be. :P

[@XanthinZarda]

f3 e6, mate in how many moves? I didn't have Battle Chess. I had Photon Chess (As seen in Shovelware Diggers) and Cyber Chess; the latter being a 1992 Softdisk release.

[@jamesmason3734]

I think I was shown a version of this game that was remade in the 90's. With different animations (and multiple animations of the same capture as the person who showed me it was expecting one checkmate animation but a different one happened instead.)

[@Pixelmusement]

Was probably the "Enhanced" version. :B

[@lasskinn474]

there was a sequel but more importantly there was a dozen copycats.. star wars chess etc.

[@jasonblalock4429]

I had a few of these animated chess games at the time, but I never stuck with them for long because the animations get so tedious to sit through. Especially on computers of the day. Even the basic walking animations could be a chore, with extended pauses to load animation or sound FX. Not to mention how quickly they turned into crap cash-grabs, like the Star Wars Chess game.

[@wolvenar]

I used to have this on the apple 2. Loved it, but sometimes it can be so slow.

[@TreuloseTomate]

The board would be easier to read if the knight looked like a horse.

[@Pixelmusement]

I'm about 99% certain the entire reason the knights aren't on horseback was so that they could do that Monty Python reference. :P

[@warlock415]

I had this on the old Amiga 1000 and I regretted getting it. Once you saw all the animations once, it was just a rather slow chess game. I also had Chessmaster and (while not as immediately appealing) it was a lot better for actually playing chess.

[@Cyberbrickmaster1986]

If I were to buy this game, I would probably get the Steam version just to access the enhanced editions and then copy the files over to run in DOSBOX. Does anyone know if the Steam version has the disc images and directories to allow me to do that? Because a number of DOS games I've bought on Steam usually provide that option.

[@CaelThunderwing]

i never played the Dos version growing up but i did the NES Version.

[@lilwyvern4]

Knowing how slowly that version moves, you must have grown up before finishing a single game.

[@pelimies1818]

The animations are so slow, Nakamura's head would explode in bullet chess..

[@OttoIncognito]

I bought this game because I liked how it looked, only to realize soon after I hated chess

[@aliorunity]

Try casteling checkmate or en-passant/en-passant checkmate :) I wonder how it will handle it.

[@Pixelmusement]

Probably just fine. I managed to pull off a single en-passant move during testing before I began recording and the way it works is to do the capture animation first, then move the remaining piece to its final destination, meaning if it results in a checkmate the checkmate animation will play out immediately following. Castling, probably the same thing; do the castling stuff first, then play out the checkmate animation for whichever piece has mated the opponent's king following.

[@Christopher-N]

I feel that the novelty of the _Battle Chess_ animations, gets old pretty quickly. I prefer Chessmaster 2000 (music option), or _Archon_ for the battles (not exactly chess; Shovelware Diggers ep 296).

[@LevitatingCups]

Chess: the movie, idea good, but playability just slogs it dooooown, animations fun for a few games but then its becomes unplayable if you actually want to play chess. But the 2d view helps, its a legit chess game for its time.