Virtua Chess

Virtua Chess was published in 1995 by the French company Titus France for the PC. The name points at what chess programs of the period usually competed on — not playing strength, but presentation: a three-dimensional board with modelled pieces and a rotating camera was the main selling argument in the mid-nineties.

The program serves both as an opponent and as a setting for two people to play at one computer. Standard equipment for titles like this included difficulty levels, take-back moves, hints for the next move and a game record that can be stepped through afterwards.

The 1995 date matters because of raw power. Processors by then could search meaningfully deeper than eight-bit machines a decade earlier, so even an ordinary home program was a stronger opponent than most buyers could handle. At the same time PCs were being fitted with graphics able to render three-dimensional pieces without long waits.

Chess software on the PC had an audience of its own, one that bought it for training and analysis rather than an evening's entertainment. The restrained interface, with no story and no campaign, follows from that.

Titus was a French company known mainly for conversions and licensed titles, and a chess program fits its catalogue at a moment when the PC was being sold to households as a general-purpose machine. Family software then included chess as naturally as it included a word processor.

Anyone wanting a game against a nineties computer can start Virtua Chess inside a browser window here on OldGame.cz.