Chronogamer - Backgammon (APF M1000, 1978)

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Backgammon (APF M1000, 1978)

 

Backgammon is an ancient and respectable game. My experience with it, prior to chronogaming, is limited to wondering what the design on the back of my checkerboard was when I was in grade school. Remember those? You'd have a checker board (or chess board) and on the other side there'd be these two dozen triangles and we'd be like "what the heck is this design?" and some other kid would always say it was backgammon but nobody knew how to play it. At least, no one around me did.

 

A friend of mine taught my wife and me how to play backgammon about 15 years ago, but I think I forgot how to play it later that day.

 

So far, there's only two Backgammon games out in our universe of videogames. Backgammon for the Fairchild Channel F and Backgammon for the APF M1000. In a duel to the death, APF's Backgammon wins because it has something not often found in the videogame versions of boardgames during this era: a computer opponent.

 

Of course, the Channel F's Backgammon actually had the instructions for how to play Backgammon, where as the APF's version just tells you how to implement the software.

 

So, with Channel F instructions in hand and the APF cart in, I play my first genuine Backgammon game against a computer and I win! Or at least I think I do. There's no fanfare whatsoever at the end of the game. I've born off all of my pieces and the computer continues as if nothing is amiss, even expects me to take my turn when I have quite clearly beaten it soundly. In fact, I don't think the computer has any AI to speak of. It's as if it's "phoning in" its Backgammon moves while playing a game of 3-D Go with someone in another timestream.

 

Oh, there's no doubling cube in case you were wondering. Channel F's has a doubling cube, but of course one had to provide one's own friend to play it with, so I guess it's a trade off.

 

Screenshot later. It's a nice board, actually. Graphics, no complaints. The fact that it HAS a computer opponent: thumbs up! The fact that the computer opponent is a little "special": meh.

 

Next entry will be the fabled Dungeon Hunt cart! Yay! Early D&D themed gaming! Yay! I want to fight a Ballhog!! ("I SHALL NOT PASS!!!")

 

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