Chronogamer - Checkers (Intellivision, 1980)

RSS Bot · July 20, 2009

Checkers (Intellivision, 1980)

Yup, still on Intellivision, still in 1980, as we have been since, what? 2007? Sorry it's taken so long, we are only one game away from finishing 1980 Intellivision games and the penultimate Intellivision game for the year is: Checkers!

I didn't actually dread playing Checkers, especially after my better-than-dreaded experience with Backgammon. I was looking forward to jumping back into the Chronogaming groove. Checkers didn't disappoint me. It was an elegantly simple implementation of the game of checkers. As with Backgammon, the visuals were very clean and easy to understand. In fact, the visuals were very much of the same style as the Backgamon visuals. Red and black board, little round pieces and a dash on them if it is a stack of two. In this case a "king".

The controls without the overlays were a little hard to figure out, so much so, in fact, that I did have to dig into my "big box of Intellivision manuals and overlays". Once I had the overlays installed, and had read the manual ("Read this manual if you want to play a winning game of checkers!") it was a breeze: playing Intellivision's Checkers was pretty fun. I was able to win regularly against computer on Lo Skill but am ashamed to say I gave up trying to beat it on Hi Skill. I may try again yet, but I was impatient to win so I could record the video I mad below.

Normally, I put board-games-turned-videogames into the class of: "Aren't these more fun played with another person? If you have another person, can't you just use a real board?" I think I've changed my stance on this, taking into account the era these early video board games were introduced: See, "now-a-days", if presented with a Checkers videogame, one is tempted to say, "No thanks, I'd rather play a different videogame." However, one may still enjoy playing Checkers (on a board) with another person. In fact, I know my kids and I like playing checkers... though usually we just play videogames... hmm, may have to change that practice.

Back in 1980, however, Checkers (and chess and Othello and backgammon) were sometimes the only form of gaming available when you went other places and gamed with other kids or even grown-ups. I remember going to a summer camp where we had a bunch of checker and chess sets and that's what some of us did every other afternoon or so. Checkers on Intellivision (and Atari, etc) was actually a good way to practice for playing against real people. Yes, playing a game like Adventure (coming up in Atari 1980) was its own reward, but I finally understand the value of being able to play against a computer opponent: it may help you improve your game for when you play against that big kid from the 8th grade, or... anyone, that was just an example...

The really notable thing about this version of Checkers is your reward for winning against the computer. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but have we heard this extensive amount of music in a home videogame before this one?

I've recorded and posted it as a YouTube video, with which I will leave you.

Piece out! (get it?) Next time we do NASL Soccer, which I think is a form of Soccer but, judging by the name, you use your nose to play it.

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