Needless to say, I lost almost all the time. But I still loved chess.
Which is why I was excited when I got this game for my birthday:
Look, I'm just going to leave my lunch money on this table over here now, you guys can just take it when you want, okay?
When I looked at the cover of this box, I felt for sure there was some hidden story behind the game. Looking at the old man, I was convinced he was some kind of sorcerer or wizard or sage of some kind. Heck, look at the text: "Challenge Grandmasters!" Obviously this guy was the Grandmaster and I'd have to beat him at some point.
Yeah, I kinda missed that part about "The Ultimate Chess Partner."
I will say, only now, looking at the game this many years later, do I realize the guy isn't wearing a hooded cloak, his hair is just in shadow. That takes away from a bit of the mystique when I realize I'm just playing chess against Jerry Garcia or Santa Claus.
The best part, though, was when you turned the game on. The first voice I ever remember hearing in a video game was the tinny little sound coming from the Game Boy speaker that welcomed me. "Wel.Come. To. Chess.Mas.Ter." My mind was blown.
Actually, I need to clarify this. The first video game I remember hearing voices in was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, but I had no idea about processing speed, CPUs, and all that other business, I just knew I heard voices coming out of a large TV while playing a video game. It was obviously advanced technology.
To have a voice talk to me from a Game Boy, though? Truly, I was living in an age of miracles, because even I could recognize at that age the graphical limitations of the device.
Graphics-wise, it was pretty basic.
Then again, does it really need to get any more visually complex for chess? The hand in the middle represents you, and you move it around while pressing the buttons to pick up and let go of pieces. When you made a valid move you'd get a little fanfare, when you made an illegal move or tried to steal your opponent's piece the game would buzz at you. It had a training mode, where it would show you what valid moves there were if you picked up a piece, You could also have "deep thinking" mode where the computer would idle for a bit as it "decided" where best to move. There were sixteen different difficulty levels from the earliest beginners to, well, "challenge grandmasters," but I never made it to the higher difficulties.
I did, however, make occasional use of an ability in the game where it would show you how to get check or mate in five moves from where you currently were. Usually I'd get the answer "no solution found."
There was also an "edit board" mode where you could add and remove pieces. Losing horribly? Pause the game and add a few more queen pieces to the board on your side. Suddenly the tide turns pretty quickly.
The game still sits comfortably with the rest of the Game Boy games I've saved from my early days, and I probably would be willing to break it out for a quick play if I got back into chess again. Its basic graphics, simple controls, and number of difficulty levels (which I don't think I've seen any other game have as many levels of "skill" in) cover every base you'd need to enjoy a round, and you could also save where you are with the classic "password" system from long ago.
Many warm childhood memories come from sitting in the back of a car during a long ride trying to figure out how best to get my pieces across the board as quickly as possible and get all of my pawns across so I could swap them out for other pieces.
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