Infection

This is it, this is the original Ataxx game, before the term even existed. It was programmed by Craig Galley, with graphics by Dave Crummack, for Amiga, Atari ST, and Commodore 64. Craig Galley remembers:

Dave and I invented it, I use the term loosely because it is very derivative of Reversi, etc. We started out with the concept of designing a board game that would work better on a computer than on a traditional board. We played in the evenings over a period of several weeks with paper pieces on a chess board tweaking the rules, but it kept coming back to the same simple set of rules, spread 1 square, twinning the piece, or jump 1 square, without twinning, and capture (or infect) the nearly pieces. Once the game was put on the computer it was easy to see it worked well, control of the board could change very rapidly and often came down to setting yourself up correctly for the last few moves.

The AI in the original versions we wrote was very primitive doing a very simple traditional tree search for the move resulting in the best outcome, it only looked ahead a couple of moves and given the nature of the game that is not far enough.

At the time, Dave Crummack was working for a company named Wise Owl Software (Craig Galley, who was one year younger, was still in school), so naturally they decided to publish it there. Wise Owl Software, who were not specialized in games, sold it to Virgin Mastertronic while work still continued. They suggested the addition of obstacle blocks, hired David Whittaker to compose the music, Mark Incley (who also programmed the CPC, MSX, and ZX versions of Klax) ported it to Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. A PC version was also made.

However, the US Virgin mother company didn't like the name (AIDS was a big topic at the time) and decided to cancel Infection, and none of these versions saw a commercial release. Virgin did, however, use the concept and some of the interface graphics for a PC, NES and Gameboy game with the Seven-up mascot Cool Spot, for which they had acquired the right. More important, they licensed it to Leland, who turned it into the arcade machine Ataxx that gave the genre its name.

Leland stayed very close to the Amiga Infection. They kept the plasma effects on the board, the animations, the whole infection theme and just added portraits for the AI opponents that fit this theme very well. Globber and Phagefight were probably directly inspired by this arcade machine.

An Ataxx game was also included in the puzzle/adventure game The 7th Guest, which was published by Virgin. There it is known as the Microscope Puzzle or Germ Game and infamous for being so tough to solve. A couple of implementations have cited this puzzle as their inspiration.