Othello

Othello from 1988, released for DOS by BlueLine Games, is a computer rendition of the famous abstract board game. Its roots go back to the Victorian game of Reversi from the late nineteenth century; the modern form was settled in Japan in the seventies and spread worldwide. The rules fit into two sentences: you place discs on an eight-by-eight board, and whenever two of your discs bracket an unbroken line of your opponent's, the whole line flips to your colour. Whoever holds more discs at the end wins.

The magic of Othello is how treacherously different it is from how it looks. A beginner greedily flips as many discs as possible and by mid-game is drowning in a useless colour — because the last few moves decide everything. An experienced player seems to play against the point of the game: keeping few discs, guarding the number of moves available, and forcing the opponent into moves they do not want to make. And above it all sit the corners — a corner disc can never be flipped again, so the fight for them tends to be the heart of the whole match.

The computer version does exactly what you want from it: it enforces the rules, flips whole lines for you and keeps a running score, removing the most tedious part of play on a physical board. Do not expect any production values — this is an austere program from 1988, a board and discs — but for an abstract game of this calibre that hardly matters.

The board game's famous motto, a minute to learn and a lifetime to master, applies in full. It is a superb trainer for exactly the kind of thinking no manual can teach: you lose for a while without understanding why, then the idea of mobility clicks and suddenly you are playing a different game. Few programs of the eighties have aged this little — because it is not the code that matters, but rules over a century old.

You can start a match on oldgame.cz directly in your browser, no installation required.