Retroulette #20: Chessmaster

Chess. The ancient game of...

of...

Ok, damn it. I don't know how to play Chess. 

Yes, it's true. Checkers is more my speed, especially when it's of the Bloody variety. At times, this has caused others to assume I am intellectually inferior. This always works to my advantage as I Columbo their asses with my delightfully piquant wit.

But of course it had to be Chess. Shhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

This may be the shortest Retroulette ever.

 This game does not fuck around. Boot the game up and it's already at the "menu" screen.

So Gandalf's true love was Chess, all along.

Your choices here are press start, or let this wizard try to read your mind. Once again, not wasting any time, upon pressing start you are given this screen.

PLAY CHESS!     That...that's what the refs say at the start of a Chess match right?

So, right away I have no fucking clue what to do. Why do you need so many different kinds of pieces? Like that horse one for example, who needs a horse piece? I guess I'll make my first move...

Damn it! Ok, let me try again....

So now I just go from piece to piece, trying to find one that will let me fucking move it.

But I can move that horse! The game is ON.

It turns out the horse piece is the only good one. I'm sorry for what I said earlier, horse.

So now the other guy moves his piece anWHAT THE HELL!?

He moved into a white square!? That can happen? Only now did I realize that our pieces start on white squares too. Maybe I am stupid...

The game goes on like that, with me making any legal move I possibly can.

It goes about as well as you'd expect.

I get to the point where it won't let me make any more moves, but the game doesn't reset or anything. This game is dumb.

HOW MUCH DID THE COVER ART LIE?

There's no misleading going on here. If you were checking out Chessmaster, you knew that you were buying a Chess game for 10 times what a board cost because you didn't have any friends to play with.

A Chess simulation is only as good as it simulates Chess I imagine. And because I have no idea where the bar should be, how the hell do I know if this is a good Chess game? I can't give this a rating.

I did like one of the pieces because it looked like a Muppet yelling out to the gods, so I will post a picture of that.

What does a Muppet have to be sad about? One of the many questions Chess can't answer.