Ataxx
Ataxx is often described as a variant of Othello, but this is misleading. There are some formal
similarities—you could easily use the same graphics for an
Ataxx and an Othello game,
Ylian Saint-Hilaire
did that—but as soon as you start playing Ataxx, you will notice
that it is a completely different game, and your experience with
Othello won't help you at all.
Typically, Ataxx is played on a 7×7 board, but some implementations
have increased the board size up to 13×13. Typically, there are
obstacles on the board, often generated randomly but symmetrically
at the start of the game. The players start with two stones each
placed in diagonally opposed corners of the board. At each turn, a
player may either:
- Place a stone next to one of his or her own stones, or
- Move a stone over two squares. Some implementations allow only
straight movement, some diagonal as well, and some even knight jumps.
Some allow jumping over an obstacle, some don't, but you can always
jump over an enemy stone.
All the enemy stones on the eight neighboring fields of the newly
placed stone then change color. The game is over when no more legal
moves are possible, and the player with more stones has won.
| A Selection |
 |
| Assimilation |
|
 |
| Globber |
|
 |
| Hexxagon |
|
 |
| Phagefight |
|
 |
| Slime |
|
 |
| Attax |
|
 |
| Dominate |
|
 |
| Yova |
|
History
The first Ataxx game was created 1988 in the UK
as Infection on the
Amiga by Dave Crummack
and Craig Galley. They ported it to Spectrum
and Amstrad CPC, but none of these versions
saw a commercial release. Instead, Infection was turned into a
Leland arcade machine
in 1990 that first used the name
Ataxx, and in
the same year Virgin turned it into a DOS game featuring the Seven-up
mascot Cool Spot. A decade later, the authors released
the original Infection as freeware.
In 1992, an Ataxx game was included in the adventure/puzzle game
The 7th Guest. It is known as the
microscope puzzle or the germ game and probably contributed a lot to
the (nontheless rather limited) popularity of the genre, though nothing
to the knowledge about its origins.
Though Ataxx originated on the Amiga, it has been most common on
PC and Mac later. Though it was invented in the UK, nearly all
subsequent implementation were made in the US. DOS implementations
usually have opulent, arcade-like graphics, while Windows and Mac
implementations rather tend to be simple, like a board game.
Around 1994, there is a break in Ataxx development. Interest in the
concept declines, at least in the US, where all the previous implementations
come from. New Ataxx games are now far more likely to be variants of the
original concept than faithful implementations.
Links
- Pressibus is the
premier Ataxx resource on the web. Unlike the Othello section, which
was frozen in 1999, the Ataxx section is still maintained, though it
has not been updated since 2005.
