Image via WikipediaChess… the mere word might invoke disdain in most people.
“What a boring game!”
“Only old people play it in parks!”
Yeah yeah. Chess is one of the first games that got me in contact with COMPUTERS, because back in the early 70’s, my dad would buy some “Chess computers” and play against them (as an aside, my dad was the National Champion like for 6 or 8 years running back in the 60’s) since there was nobody around who could pose a challenge to him, let alone beat him.
And us kids, well we do pretty well in chess for ourselves. That is beside the point though. The point is, although I might not be as passionate about Chess as my dad was, I still like an ocassional game now and again.
Back in the mid to late 1990’s, Sierra online made a chess game called Power Chess. To me, it was one of the best, if not the ultimate chess game ever produced. Unfortunately, Sierra didn’t update it past PowerChess 98, and it died a natural death. However, I never forgot why I loved it, and even up to today, I keep hoping to find something similar.
In PowerChess, it’s not about how strong it is, or how fast it can beat you. You can have all that if you want, in the form of Chessmaster. While Chessmaster keeps claiming it helps you to learn to play chess, in my opinion only PowerChess did that. Let me elaborate.
In Power Chess, when you played against the Power Chess King (your adversary), the Power Chess Queen would record your moves while you played. After the game (win or lose), the Queen would replay the session, and gave you commentaries on your moves and on the King’s as well. When I say “commentaries”, I mean commentaries. She didn’t just tell you it was a good or bad move. She told you why it was. Like “2 moves later when the King moved the Rook, you would have lost your bishop” type of thing. All these, in a very natural-sounding speech synthesis. Also, she would present you with alternate moves you could have tried, if you wanted her to show you that during the commentaries.
The Power Chess King was also a “learning” player. As you played more games with the King, he learnt your moves and style, and thus he progressed at the same rate as you. He was thus, a “resistance trainer” for you. When you played against him, he would learn, and present you with just about the right amount of “resistance” to keep you guessing.
I found that this was a better way to learn, than to have endless “Chess databases” of opening books, mid-games and end-game examples all thrown in your face. Trust me, I have a heap of “learning chess” types of programs, and they don’t really teach you anything. Not much anyway. By far the best in teaching chess, in my opinion, is Power Chess.
You might ask – if I miss it so much, why don’t I re-install it?
Good question. Bad answer though – because it won’t run under the NT kernel. That means, the latest Windows it would run under is Windows ME, ie the Millenium Edition. Yeah it won’t run under Windows 2000, XP and so on. To play Power Chess again means I have to “dual-boot” this PC into Windows 98.
Or install an old PC with Windows 98 and just this game. No thanks I think. Too much work, and I’m too lazy to do that 🙂
