Chess games: the classic PC chess programs

Chess was one of the first things anyone tried to make a computer do, which is why the personal computer era produced dozens of chess programs long before it produced most other genres. This collection gathers the ones that mattered: the engines people bought to actually improve their game, the presentation-driven titles that turned a chessboard into a spectacle, and the oddities that used chess rules as a frame for something else entirely.

The best-known title here is Battle Chess from Interplay, released in 1988. The rules are standard chess; the difference is that every capture plays out as a short animated fight between the two pieces, with the knight beheading pawns and the rook turning into a stone giant. It sold on that gimmick alone and spawned follow-ups including a Chinese chess version and the science-fiction themed Battle Chess 4000. The same idea, applied to a licence, produced Star Wars Chess from The Software Toolworks and the Terminator 2 chess variant from Capstone.

For actual play strength the reference points are the long-running commercial engines. The Chessmaster series, which began with The Chessmaster 2000 in 1986, combined a decent engine with teaching tools and stayed on shelves for two decades. Sargon, written by Dan and Kathe Spracklen, goes back to the late 1970s and reached its fifth version in 1991. Alongside them the collection has MChess Pro, Complete Chess System, Chess System Tal — named after the attacking world champion Mikhail Tal — and Psion Chess, one of the strongest programs available on 8-bit machines.

There is also a teaching branch. Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess adapts the former world champion's instructional book into a series of tactical positions, and Chess Tutor works along similar lines. If you want the game itself rather than a lesson, plain implementations such as Chess Simulator or MyChess give you a board and nothing else.

Titles marked as playable run in the browser through an emulator, with no installation and no account. Be aware that engines from this era are weak by modern standards — an experienced club player will beat most of them.