Battle Chess(EU)

Overview

• Full Name: Battle Chess
• Code:
• Type: Board game
• Developer: Krisalis Software
• Publisher: Interplay Productions
• Language: English
• Release Date: 1993
• Region: EU
• Barcode: 5 026102 005113
• Local Title:
• Rarity: 1
• Notes:

Overview

A worthy attempt to make chess attractive to beginners. What could be more interesting than watching chess pieces fight? However, 3D graphics are not as expressive as they could be. Animation is good for the late 80s, but not the mid 90s! Where are the latest fashion trends in the face of interactive videos and digitized fighters ??? Nevertheless, the program includes a "chess engine" that makes an impression even on notorious chess players, and the 2-dimensional board is a good example of clarity and simplicity.

The very fact that this typically computer game appeared on 3DO proves once again that a great future was predicted for the system. Whatever I say there, the game is executed at a decent level.

Game Play

Battle Chess follows the same rules as traditional chess, with pieces moving in an animated fashion and battles playing out so that the capturing piece defeats its target. Furthermore, when checkmate is delivered, the checkmating piece fights and defeats the king. Since there are six types of pieces for each color, and a king cannot capture a king, there are a total of 35 different battle animations.[2] The rook, for example, turns into a rock monster and kills a pawn by smashing its head, and the rook kills the queen by eating her. There are some pop-culture homages; the knight versus knight animation references the black knight fight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the king versus bishop fight pastiches the short battle between Indiana Jones and a swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The game can be also played in a 2D version with no animations.

The game has an opening library of over 30,000 moves.

Development

Battle Chess was the first title developed and published by Interplay Entertainment themselves after ending their relationship with Electronic Arts, besides Neuromancer. The game was featured in the 1992 film Knight Moves about a chess grandmaster who is accused of several murders.[3] Battle Chess producer and Interplay's founder Brian Fargo expressed his fondness for the game in a 2006 interview, although he added that he did not think there would be much of an audience for it today.[4]

An apocryphal story of the development was the invention of "The Duck" (an example of Parkinson's law of triviality): The producers of the game were known to demand changes to the game, presumably to make their mark on the finished product. To this end, one animator added a small duck around the queen piece, but made sure that the sprite would be easily removable. Come review, the producers, predictably, okayed everything but asked for the duck to be removed

Reception

Battle Chess sold 250,000 copies by February 1993. (Unsure of how many copies the 3DO sold)

Interplay won "Best Graphics Achievement In A Non-Graphics Product" from Software Publishers Association (later renamed to Software and Information Industry Association) for Battle Chess.[16] In 1994 Computer Gaming World added it to the magazine's Hall of Fame honoring those games rated highly over time by readers, describing Battle Chess as "a showcase product for the first level of multimedia standards".[17] In 1996 the magazine ranked it as the 106th best game of all time for its "funny, elaborate animated sequences and spectacular special effects

Magazine Reviews

Name	Date	Region	Rating	Notes
Consoles Plus	Jan 94		78%	Les programmeurs ont mal dosé la vitesse des combats. Le principe de Battlechess est très bon, mais sa lenteur risque fort de vous décevoir.
SuperGamePower	Sept 94		66%	Jogo de xadrez para videogame é coisa antiga. Começou na década de 70 com o Atari. Nos anos 80, com a febre dos PC computers, tornou-se possível jogar xadrez na tela. Battle Chess que é lançado agora para 3DO é uma versão melhorada deste jogo de computador que fez muito sucesso junto aos apreciadores de um bom xadrez. São duas telas: bidimensional (tabuleiro normal, visto de cima) e tridimensional (com animação de peças). Além disso, pode-se salvar a partida para disputar mais tarde e apelar para sugestões do computador nas horas decisivas. O ato de "comer" uma peça no 3D dá sequência a uma batalha entre personagens em que o forte é o humor negro: decapitação, tiros e envenenamento. Para quem sempre quis aprender xadrez e não tinha paciência, eis a oportunidade: o modo Tutorial ensina as manhãs do tabuleiro, além de dar um histórico do jogo.
Video Games*	Apr 94		62%	Wenn die witzigen Animationen nicht wären, könntet Ihr Battlechess getrost vergessen. Einige der Kampfszenen sind jedoch echt genial, besonders die Anleihen an Monty Pythons “Ritter der Kokosnuß“ muß man gesehen haben. Der Reiz des Neuen läßt aber schnell nach, bald schaltet Ihr die Battlesequenzen ab. Als reine Schachsimulation enttäuscht Battlechess, denn von der Spielstärke her bietet es ungefähr das gleiche Niveau wie Dirks ungewaschene Socken (allerdings riecht die CD besser). Geübten Schachfans wird der Computergegner keinerlei Probleme bereiten, höchstens als Sparringspartner zum Ausmerzen von Leichtsinnsfehlern ist er zu gebrauchen. Eine spielstarke Schachsimulation wäre mir lieber.
EGM*	Jan 94		62%	If you are a chess fan, then you may want to check this title out. This is simply chess in a three-dimensional board with pieces that walk, talk, and fight to the finish when taking another players' chess pieces.
3DO Magazine*	Dec 94		40%	A worthy attempt to make chess exciting for beginners, its 3D graphics aren't as flash or funny as they might be. However there's an impressive chess engine under the hood while a 2D board is a model of clarity and simplicity.

• - Need review page

Other Versions

The original version was released on the Amiga in 1988 and went onto multiple systems including - Acorn Archimedes, Amiga CD32, Amiga CDTV, Apple IIGS, Apple IIe, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, FM Towns, NES, Mac OS, NEC PC-9801, X68000 and Microsoft Windows.

The game was remastered in 2015, under the steam release: Battle Chess:Game of Kings.

Credits

• Note - Identical rosters ship in all regions but JP reworks some headers

• 3DO Programming Keith Birkett (Krisalis Software)
• Battle Chess CD Programming Greg Christensen
• Original Battle Chess Michael Quarles, Jay Patel, Troy Worrell
• Artwork David Mosher, Arlene Caberto, Todd Camasta
• Music Scott La Rocca
• Additional Music Arrangement Rick Freeman
• Sound Effects Alan Howarth, Jason King, Scott La Rocca, Brian Mendelsohn
• Synclavier Operation Brian Mendelsohn, Rick Freeman, Alan Howarth, Jason King, Mike Papa
• Voices Art Dutch, Ryan O'Flannigan, Douglas Coler, Greg Snow, Sandra Snow, KA Mouston, Dave Surtees
• Tutorial Bruce J Balfour, Roger Rittner Productions
• Original Producer Troy Worrell
• Producer Bill Dugan
• Executive Producer Brian Fargo
• Director of Quality Assurance Kirk Tome
• Assistant Director of QA Rodney Relosa
• Testers Bill Church, Floyd Grubb, Jason Taylor, Chris Tremmel
• Additional 3DO Graphics Phil Hackney, Neil Adamson, Tracy Hudson
• Krisalis — Programmers Keith Birkett, Nigel Little, Richard Teather, Jason Butler, Mat Cook, Omar 'Ramo' Aysha, John Stephens, Andy Ware, Rob Hill, Mark Incley, Simeon Pashley
• Krisalis — 'Wanna be' Programmer Pete Harrap
• Krisalis — Graphics Artists Neil Adamson, Phil Hackney, Tracy Hudson, Paul Dobson, Dave Colledge, Mark Potente, Darren Hebden
• Krisalis — Quality Assurance Steve Sumner
• Krisalis — Administration Claire Brown, Amanda Pugh, Paul Kirk, Tim '10 a penny' James, Siobhan Moran, Donna Stead
• Krisalis — The Management Tony Kavanagh, Pete Harrap, Shaun Hollingworth
• Special Thanks Tony Myles, Neil Day, 3DO

Disc Archaeology

Findings from a byte-level analysis of the European retail disc image (294,522,880 bytes / 143,360 blocks).

A programmer's hard drive in the padding

The disc's 14,774 unallocated blocks (~29 MB) are not filler — they contain recycled fragments of a Macintosh development environment, identifiable down to the machine's owner. Readable in the padding are:

• Apple MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop) shell material: the "About MPW" / "Hide MPW Shell" menu strings, find-and-replace dialog text, and live shell commands such as Directory "KeithsIntHD:Alone:Game:Sources:" > "{ShellDirectory}"MPW.Errors || Alert.
• 3DO SDK environment setup: Export 3DORemote; Export 3DOIncludes; Export 3DOLibs; and a "Create 3DO Makefile" command, alongside MPW's SANELIB and STDCLIB libraries.
• File dialogs frozen mid-session, including: "Overwrite file "KeithsIntHD:ALONE:GAME:SOUND:SAMPLES:rawsamples:s12.VOC"?" and a batch command duplicate -y {i} :rawsamples:{i}.

The volume name KeithsIntHD — "Keith's Internal HD" — matches Keith Birkett, the game's credited Krisalis 3DO programmer, and the Alone: project folders (with PC-format .VOC sound samples being converted) are his next project, Alone in the Dark — the very game his hidden credits message announces (see below). The disc effectively preserves a snapshot of Alone in the Dark's 3DO port in mid-development, months before its release.

The hidden "Alternate Credits"

The executable contains Keith Birkett's complete hidden second credits sequence: "Excuse my vanity" followed by his own name eight times and "That is so sad!", a year-of-crunch confession ("First the Archimedes version then 3DO. NEVER AGAIN"), the font's missing exclamation mark joke, greetings to family and friends, an admission of having been thrown off the Strathclyde and Newcastle MUDs for "being annoying to mortals, wizards, GMs", the announcement "My next blockbusting release will be Alone in the Dark, and it should be available for the European and Japanese release of the 3DO", and a closing "Wobble Wobble" — a routine he "spent ages writing... and only used once, for a very cheap joke".

PAL-specific touches

• notpal.cel at the disc root — a warning screen for consoles on the wrong video standard.
• Menu labels read "3DO SYS -- Red / Blue" where other builds say "CPU".
• A font.kfont font file and the British debug strings "Shagged in timer1" / "Shagged in timer3".

Development leftovers

• /bc/2d.old — a superseded version of the 2D piece data (79,824 bytes against the shipping 2d's 11,244) left on the disc.
• kris.cine — the Krisalis logo stream — is padded to exactly 1,048,576 bytes (1 MiB).

Filesystem notes

The redundant directory copies ("avatars") of /System/Drivers, Folios, Programs and Scripts, plus rom_tags, disagree between copies — stale older generations from multi-pass mastering, pressed into every disc. The root directory copies verify hash-identical, so this is a mastering artifact, not dump damage.

Speculation

Informed guesswork, clearly separated from the findings above. The mastering data path suggests the EU disc image was assembled on (or from scratch storage shared with) Keith Birkett's own development Mac, rather than a dedicated mastering station — which would explain why his MPW session and Alone in the Dark working files ended up in the padding. If so, every EU Battle Chess pressing doubles as an accidental backup of a slice of Krisalis's 1994 development environment.

Linked Titles

• Americas Version - Battle Chess
• Japanese Version - Battle Chess

Media

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  Battle Chess Console Plus Jan 94 Review
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  Battle Chess SuperGamePower Sept 94 Review