“Battle Chess” Logo

“Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink, and an elephant may bathe”

-Proverb from India

It took 2000 years for someone to make chess better.

The most challenging game on earth comes to life in BATTLE CHESS. An entire medieval world at war is reflected on the checkered field.

Everyone who’s ever had a knight take a pawn has seen that capture as more than one piece replacing another on the board. In players’ minds, the bold knight, resplendent in his armor of silver or ebon, sallies forth and slays the foul footsoldier. Combat, mortal combat, is the heart and soul of chess, but this aspect of it can only live in the mind’s eye...

Lots of computer chess games capture the basics of chess. Only BATTLE CHESS combines a magnificent chess logic system with colorful and dramatic three-dimensional animations.

• Animated 3-D or traditional 2-D overview of action.
• Advanced 3-D animation and digitized sound effects.
• Over 4 megabytes of animations.
• Play against the computer or your friend, or let the computer play against itself.
• Modem capability for long distance games
• 10 Levels of play challenge even the most sophisticated player.
• Opening library of 30,000 moves.
• Two artists were made as mad as Paul Morphy doing this game.

Excerpts taken from “BATTLE CHESS” Box (back) and Manual.

Picture take from the front of the BATTLE CHESS User Manual

BATTLE CHESS

There is a darkness over the battlefield. The wind sighs gently, and there, in the distance, comes the flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder. With a sudden gust of wind, your warriors appear--- the King, the Queen, two each of Bishops, Knights and Rooks, and before them all, a row of pawns. Waiting, your King turns to you, ready to order his servants forwards to their deaths in your battle to rule the field. Yet you hesitate. In that moment, you hear the clank of armor as the wind grows stronger, and somewhere nearby, there comes the sound of metal upon metal as one of your warriors draws his blade, impatient for the coming slaughter.

Suddenly, the thunder crackles overhead and lightning flashes shadows upon the checkered board. The time is come. There can be no more delay. The storm is upon you, and so too the battle. You make your choice--- a pawn marches forward against the darkness opposing you. And here, the game begins....

Excerpt taken from BATTLE CHESS User Manual.

Michael Quarles

Do you have any idea what it’s like to have an artist hand you eight disks’ worth of animation data and your boss tells you that you have to pack it down to one? Well that’s what happened to me. Brian also informed me that I would have to put my program and 200K if digitized sound on the same disk. Needless to say, I knew there were going to be hard times ahead for all of us working on BATTLE CHESS.

It would have been much easier on me if we could have given away a hard disk and a 2MB RAM card with every game! I can remember Todd, Jay, Bruce and myself working weekends and long hours, without such luxuries as sleep, to meet deadlines like consumer shows and demos for overseas buyers, and then having to go home and promise wives that it would soon be over soon. It’s been one tough haul but we’re very proud of BATTLE CHESS. Through all this we kept one theme in mind “Never ever let the quality slip”. I have to admit we had a lot of fun story-boarding the combats even though most of that credit goes to Todd.

We worked hard because of Interplay. We have a lot of talented people here-- we know if we work hard enough we can put out great games that all can enjoy and be proud of.

Excerpt taken from BATTLE CHESS User Manual (back).

From the left: Jay Patel, Bruce Schlickbernd, Mike Quarles, Todd Camasta.