#6: The Chessmaster

Can you beat Gandalf at chess?

Do you have a desperate need to play a slow, plodding game of chess with bad sound effects and AI? Then Mindscape has the game for you! The first thing that happens when you hit start is you get thrown into a game against an opponent of unknown difficulty. This AI was really big into trading units and actually had a one pawn lead on me into the late game. I don't know how/why it happened (I certainly didn't plan it out) but he ended up losing a rook for no cost and that was pretty much game. I promoted a pawn into a bishop (it said to hit A for a queen but the A button on my xBox controller is in the same location as the SNES B button) but it was good enough.

Suck it, Black!

I'm bad at chess. So the fact I won the first game either means the AI is bad or it let me win. After that game it actually took me into an options menu that I feel should have been available from the start...

2-Player Mode for those without a set.

I tried turning the background music on and let's just say it's very good it defaults to off. It actually reminded me of my first computer programming class in high school when people first discovered they could make qBasic play 'music'. A lot of this game felt like an intro programming class, actually. The graphics feel amateurish. The sound effects certainly are, with the same sound playing both when you take a piece and lose a piece. And the music is just terrible.

The only thing it has going for it is actual chess AI. There are a bunch of different 'level of play' settings that probably change the game a fair bit and which I wouldn't expect a teenager to be able to program. Maybe this game was ok at the time but it seems pretty mediocre now. I'm pretty sure I rented this game at some point in my youth since I remember the Gandalf intro screen but I doubt I was very happy with that decision.

Rating: D-