MEGA 4 GREAT GAME MACHINE (GGM)

The double-speed version of the Great Game Machine

GREAT GAME MACHINE

This was Applied Concepts version of the Modular Game System on which the Boris Sargon ran. The latest version the Destiny MEGA-4 GGM is very similar, but has a 4 MHz processor that is twice as fast as the original, and will run the STEINITZ-4 program module (not offered to me for testing) which supposed to be an upgrade of Morphy. The Great Game Machine Mega IV can also be used with optional program cartridges to play draughts (checkers), reversi (othello), blackjack (pontoon) and as a monitor for kriegspiel games between two human opponents.

The great drawback of this kind of system is that different games have different input/output requirements and to accommodate them, the MEGA-4 like its predecessors in non-sensory. It has an awkward membrane keyboard, an LCD display and an integral non-sensory chess set. This makes it a very expensive piece of obsolete hardware unless you are seriously interested in the other games it plays, and you can get specialist computers for most of those. Therefore I am surprised that such a machine should be launched in the highly ‘sensory’ market of 1983-1984 and I shall be surprised if it is not a commercial flop.

The MASTER CHESS TRIO concept is central to the Great Game Machine and MEGA-4. The idea of this is that you begin with a specialist openings module, the GRUENFELD EDITION, and when it signals ‘end of book’, the power switch is moved to ‘memory’, enabling the RAM in the computer to hold the position and game variables while the ROM cartridge is withdrawn and replaced by the ROM program, which plays the middle-game (either the Morphy or now the Steinitz Edition) and finally when the endgame stage is signalled, the process may be repeated and the specialist endgame program ROM, the CAPABLANCA EDITION inserted to complete the game.

Excerpt taken from “The New Chess Computer Book” by T. D. Harding - Pergamon Press 1985

So the question needs to be asked was the Destiny MEGA-4 GGM ever released? Where there any made at all? Most sources say no.

But here it is for you to enjoy the DESTINY MEGA-4 GREAT GAME MACHINE - 4 MHz: