bdugan@teri.bio.uci.edu (Bill Dugan) (04/30/91)
Interplay Productions introduces two new chess games for the Macintosh! "Battle Chess" features animated pieces who walk around the board and beat up each other as you play chess. For instance, if a Knight captures a Pawn, the Knight walks over to the pawn, they square off, and fight until the victor wins. Battle Chess is real chess, and you can play against the computer or against another person, or over the modem against a distant opponent. Battle Chess for the Mac is black-and-white only and runs on any Mac from the Plus up to the IIfx. You need at least 1 meg of RAM and System 6.0.2 (up). Battle Chess costs $49.95 and you can buy it from any computer store or direct from Interplay at 1-800-969-GAME. "Checkmate" features the best chess algorithm available on a personal computer. In our tests, Checkmate beats Chessmaster 2100, Sargon IV, and AI Chess. Checkmate has an opening library of over 300,000 moves and even names famous openings if you play them (e.g. "Sicilian Defense"). It has a "What If?" option to explore different lines of play, with Checkmate advising preferred moves. Game clocks are always visible on both the 3D and 2D boards, and the level is customizable for match-your-time thinking or for whatever number of minutes & seconds you want. You can play in color or black-and-white, and you need at least 1 meg of memory -- the more memory you allocate Checkmate, the better its play due to the larger transposition table. Checkmate has many, many other features that help you improve your game of chess. Checkmate costs $54.95 and you can buy it from any computer store or direct from Interplay at 1-800-969-GAME.
laird@chinet.chi.il.us (Laird J. Heal) (05/01/91)
In article <281CE90A.21385@orion.oac.uci.edu> bdugan@teri.bio.uci.edu (Bill Dugan) writes: >Interplay Productions introduces two new chess games for the Macintosh! > >"Battle Chess" features animated pieces who walk around the board and beat up >each other as you play chess. >[...] >Battle Chess costs $49.95 and you can buy it from any computer store or >direct from Interplay at 1-800-969-GAME. Well, since we have an advertisement here, and I played Battle Chess on my brother-in-laws 33MHz PClone over the weekend for lack of anything better to do, let me ask is it as dog slow? and does it play as badly? Bear in mind, I am not exactly a slouch at chess. > >"Checkmate" features the best chess algorithm available on a personal >computer. In our tests, Checkmate beats Chessmaster 2100, Sargon IV, and >AI Chess. How about some impartially conducted tests? What are the time controls? And finally, Is it as copy-protected (even asking for a move from a manual's digest is copy protection)? I don't know about getting advertisements here, although when they are as blatantly one-sided as this one they are scarcely likely to mislead anyone, and I do like hearing about chess programs. Sargon III worked on my first Macintosh but not on my new ones, and it may be time to either buy a new game or think about porting GNU Chess. -- Laird J. Heal The Usenet is dead! Here: laird@chinet.chi.il.us Long live the Usenet!