Video Chess On An Atari Flashback Portable
Howdy and welcome!
Blog Overview:
Introduction
What is the Atari Flashback Portable?
History of Atari Chess
Me playing against the highest skill level on my Atari Flashback Portable
The game that I played in regular Chess format
Conclusion of me against my Atari and Further mentions
Introduction
Great to see you on my blog! Today, we will be time travelling back in time, and unleashing the most powerful (not to mention most popular) chess engine from the 80's!
What is the Atari Flashback portable?
Recently, I was looking through my stash of trinkets, when I came across my ol' Atari Flashback Portable Handheld Gaming Console. What is an Atari Flashback Portable? How does it look like?
During 2017, AtGames, a company that specializes in retro gaming products, Released the Atari Flashback Portable. The Atari Flashback Portable was a handheld device designed to play the original Atari games. (As you may have guessed, chess was one of them) The Atari Flashback Portable was made to appeal to fans of the classic Atari games. The handheld console offers a large variety of 70 different games that can be played anywhere and anytime. The Atari Flashback Portable also allows users to customize their game library with a SD card slot. However, the Atari Flashback Portable also has drawbacks that affect the gaming experience and satisfaction for many of it's users. But that's another story...
Now that you are more familiar with the Atari Flashback Portable, let's see the history behind Atari Chess.
History of Atari Chess:
Atari chess, or "video chess" is a video game that was released by Atari in 1979 for the Atari 2600, one of the most popular home consoles at the time. The game "video chess" was programmed by Larry Wagner and Bob Whitehead, both who later left Atari to develop games for Activision. Video chess is based on the classic rules of chess. The game is played from an overhead perspective of an 8x8 board. Video Chess will make a warning sound if you attempt to play an illegal chess move. There are eight different difficulty levels, which affect the amount of time that the "Atari chess engine" takes to determine its moves. Video Chess was actually considered to be impossible to make for the Atari 2600 at first, because of the technological limitations of Atari at the time.
Video chess was one of the first chess games for a home console, and it demonstrated the capabilities of the Atari 2600 and its programmers. Atari's success with video chess inspired other chess games for other platforms, such as Chessmaster for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The original Atari video chess is a remarkable achievement in the home console industry, as it brought one of the oldest and most complex board games to one of the earliest and home consoles.
After I found out that I still own an Atari Flashback Portable, I found the manual it came with and looked through the games. And sure enough, there was Video Chess as an option.
I plugged it in to charge, and after I got back to it, the first thing I did was find Video Chess from the selection games, then I set the difficulty to the highest level possible, level 8! (Just to confirm that level 8 is the highest, I found an online user manual for my Atari and it clearly stated "chess levels from beginner to expert") My Atari Flashback gave me the option to choose between white and black, because it can not randomly generate which side each player starts on. So I chose white. (of course)
Me playing against the highest skill level on my Atari Flashback Portable
If you have been following me for a while, you probably know what my favourite starting (or opening) move is...
Followed by the "Atari chess engine" move, e5.
I decided to "place my bet" with the Bishop's opening.
Followed by Nc6...
D3...
After d5, I thought to myself "well this should be an interesting game"
Because I was not sure what my Atari was trying to do here, I thought to myself; "Well, why not take with the pawn in this position instead of the bishop for a change? That just might add more chess patina."
Let's see how the game goes on...
Well, at this point I realized that a 50 year old chess engine might not be good enough to keep up with me. Black's last move, b4+, was, to say the least, not very good...
I was surprised to find out on the Chess.com analysis that pawn to c3 was a "great move". I guess you never know, right?
My Atari Flashback Portable left two... no... THREE minor pieces hanging...
You probably caught the trend. An chess engine ported from a 50 year old console (btw, I rounded to 50, the original Atari 2600 was released 44 years ago) is not anymore close to as good as it used to be...
Time to skip ahead through the game to the move Qd3. I think it's interesting to share the end of my play and the final checkmate....yep, my Atari even blundered their queen. You can count the material here to check if you must.
I guess that my Atari for some reason can't castle and moves their king to f8?
I now play d7, trying to close in on that black king.
I could check with the bishop...
...but I wanted to finish this blog with a fancy checkmate with my knight. Let's see how my plan went...
Then the Atari moved pawn to f5.
Now to check that king with Qe7.
And there we have it! Good game to my ol' Atari Flashback.
The game that I just played in regular Chess format
Conclusion of me against my Atari and Further mentions
We have gotten to the end of an era (not to mention the end of this blog). Now, I'm not about to research and write about stockfish, komodo, or a chess engine or et cetera (although in a future blog maybe I should...). You probably know that -nearly- 50 years later, chess has advanced to the point where we can not just pull out a device and win a game with the most advanced chess engine so easily.
In other words, I hope that you learned something new out of this blog, or at least gained some new information!
As usual, any sort of comments/suggestions/feedback on my blogs are highly appreciated!
Have an awesome day! (:
