Battle Chess
What is it?
Inspired by the holographic 3D-chess in Star Wars
(Let the Wookie win
), this game added some animated action
to the venerable concept. It was quite a success for Interplay,
who had just severed their ties to Electronic Arts, was ported
to many platforms and had a hi-res
Enhanced CD-ROM version
for PC and Mac.
Some of the combat animations. Note that all the pieces have an animation against the King as well, which is played after a checkmate.
It may be strange to compare Battle Chess with Fallout, but actually the two games have a lot in common beyond being made, in part, by the same people. The main intention of both games is the same.
Battle Chess was created as a flashy presentation for real, true, traditional chess. Fallout was intended as a flashy presentation for GURPS, a real, true, ten year old pen & paper tabletop role playing system. Only because Steve Jackson thought Fallout was too gory, Interplay had to nolens volens create a system of their own, and this system (S.P.E.C.I.A.L.) turned out to be not very fit for pnp play.
Besides—if you have played any of the Fallout games, the battle animation of the Queen against the Bishop will look very familiar. It was used in Fallout for the Alien Blaster and in Fallout 2 for the pulse weapons.
The wonderful animations. Nothing is as much fun as watching these little bricks come to life and kick the living daylights out of each other. Every fight is unique and ingenious in its own way. My personal favourite is when the King uses his royal staff as a baseball bat and launches a bomb towards the Knight. The expression on the Knight's face is indescribable.
It was the first "chess game for people who don't like chess." While you can play the game from the traditional 2D top-down view of the board, it is the 3D/isometric view that makes the game unique. In the 3D view, you move your pieces and then watch them walk to their new location, or engage in fights in colorful and very well-drawn animations. Knights slash opponents with their swords, stone rooks pound with their fists, and pawns pierce their enemy with spears. These little fights are what set Battle Chess apart from other chess games, but they are essential to making chess much more entertaining to the majority of gamers who don't play chess regularly.
