Video Chess is a chess game for the Atari VCS (renamed Atari 2600 in 1982) programmed by Larry Wagner and Bob Whitehead and released by Atari in 1979. Both programmers later developed games for Activision.
The game is played from an overhead perspective. The player uses a cursor to select and move pieces, rather than using chess notation. If an attempted move is illegal, the move is blocked with a warning sound.
Video Chess (Atari 2600)
If the right-most switch is set to A, the computer plays as white; setting it to B lets the player play as white. With the left switch, selecting A allows the board to be set as the player pleases, whereas selecting B sets up the board for a regulation chess game. Eight different difficulty levels have the computer-player take a variable amount of time to determine its moves, ranging from a few seconds to ten hours.
The box art of the first production run of the Atari Video Computer System features a chess piece, though Atari was not yet contemplating deg a chess game. A man from Florida supposedly sued Atari over the box art. Video Chess programmer Bob Whitehead said he was not aware of such a lawsuit.
At first, the console's strict hardware limitations seemed to preclude it hosting a chess program. The console's Television Interface Adaptor chip can only display three sprites in each scanline, or six (such as in Space Invaders) with the right programming. The eight-piece-wide chess board exceeds this limitation. Whitehead developed a technique he called Venetian blinds, in which a sprite's horizontal position is alternated between two values at every scanline, while the hardware outputs video signal. This results in one sprite being displayed as two objects, each composed of horizontal stripes. This technique allowed to display eight chess pieces in each row while using only four sprites.
Atari developed a bank switching ROM cartridge to allow Video Chess prototypes to exceed four kilobytes, the maximum without bank switching. The released version is 4KB at a time when most games were 2KB, and the bank switching technology from the prototype was later used for other Atari VCS games. It was one of six games labeled as 'Special Edition' on the box, and some speculate that this designation on these games refers to a combination of the 4KB ROM size and other factors.
Video magazine praised it as 'a reward for Atari owners' which even basic chess players 'should find rewarding for many hours of enjoyment'. The reviewers were surprised that the gameplay was limited to a single player, and noted the high retail price of US$40 (equivalent to $170 in 2024), but they praised the programming which prevents illegal moves, and which includes more advanced chess concepts like castling and en ant capturing which had not yet become standard in all chess video games.
More details about this game can be found on Wikipedia.org.
This version of Video Chess was designed for Atari 2600, which was commercially very successful video game console of second generation produced by Atari from 1977 to 1992. It was the first console that used removable memory modules with games. At the time of its greatest fame, more than 30 million units of this console were sold for about $ 200 a piece. To date, the game library for this console contains nearly 1,000 original games. More information about the Atari 2600 can be found here.
Recommended Game Controllers:
You can control this game easily by using the keyboard of your PC (see the table next to the game). However, for maximum gaming enjoyment, we strongly recommend using a USB joystick that you simply plug into the USB port of your computer. If you do not have a joystick, buy a suitable USB controller on Amazon or AliExpress or in some of your favorite online stores.
Available online emulators:
5 different online emulators are available for Video Chess. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic features of each emulator available for this game Video Chess are summarized in the following table:
If you like Video Chess you'll probably like also some of the similar games in the overview below. The games you see here are selected based on title similarity, game genre, and keywords. However, the list is generated automatically and can therefore be very 'subjective' especially for some specific games. To find a particular game, please use our search form.
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This version of Video Chess was designed for Atari 2600, which was commercially very successful video game console of second generation produced by Atari from 1977 to 1992. It was the first console that used removable memory modules with games. At the time of its greatest fame, more than 30 million units of this console were sold for about $ 200 a piece. To date, the game library for this console contains nearly 1,000 original games. More information about the Atari 2600 can be found 
