Software:Microchess
| Microchess | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Peter R. Jennings |
| Publisher(s) | Micro-Ware / Personal Software |
| Platform(s) | KIM-1, Altair 8800, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, PET, TRS-80, TRS-80 Color Computer |
| Release | December 18, 1976 |
| Genre(s) | Computer chess |
Microchess, sometimes written as MicroChess, is a chess program developed by Peter R. Jennings and released in 1976 by his publishing company Micro-Ware for the MOS Technology KIM-1 microcomputer. The game plays chess against the human player at a beginner level, with the player entering moves via a keyboard and the computer responding, both in a custom chess notation. The game was ported to many other microcomputers such as the TRS-80, Apple II, Commodore PET and Atari 8-bit family computers by Micro-Ware and its successor company Personal Software/VisiCorp between 1976 and 1980, with later versions featuring graphics. A dedicated chess computer version of the game, ChessMate, was produced by Commodore International in 1978, and the game engine was licensed to Novag for its dedicated Chess Champion Mk II in 1979.
The game was created by Jennings over the course of around six months in 1976. He created it with the aim of making a product that could be widely sold, rather than as the most advanced chess engine possible. It was possibly the first computer game to be sold commercially, the first commercial chess program for microcomputers, and the first software package to sell 50,000 copies. It ultimately sold over a million copies across all of its versions by the mid-1980s, and variants were sold into the early 1990s. Despite being commercially successful, Microchess was later regarded by critics as a poor chess game.
Gameplay
Microchess is a chess program which will play chess against the player at a low level. The original versions of the game did not have a video output; the player would enter their moves via the keyboard using a custom notation and the program would respond with its own in the same notation. The program could run at three levels of speed: responding instantly, responding after five to ten seconds, or taking long enough that a full game could take an hour. It looks up to three moves ahead when planning a move—three ply—and has been estimated to play at around Elo 1100, or around a beginner level. Later versions of the game for newer microcomputers had visual outputs of the chess board.[1]
Development
Microchess was developed by Peter R. Jennings in 1976. He had wanted to create a chess program for many years after reading a Scientific American article about it, and after seeing an article about the new MOS Technology KIM-1 microcomputer decided to buy one and try to write his own program. Jennings wrote it with the intention of creating a game to sell, first for the KIM-1 and then for other microcomputers, rather than to create the best chess engine possible.[1]
Jennings began work on the game in May 1976, and had a program that would play chess against a human player within weeks. He then spent six months iteratively expanding how well the computer could understand moves and strategies in chess, working within the limited one kilobyte of memory of the computer. The KIM-1 in 1976 did not have a video display or full keyboard, so players would enter in the move they would make using a custom notation, and the computer would display the notation for its own move in return on a small seven-segment display, with the player optionally keeping track of the game on a physical chess board. An incomplete version shown at a show in November 1976 by MOS Technology, and the game was completed the following month.[1]
Release
Jennings released the game on December 18, 1976, and sent announcements of the game to hobbyist magazines and catalogues. In April 1977, he founded Micro-Ware for the purpose of selling the game. Initial sales of Microchess were not of the program on a cassette tape, but a printed booklet of computer code which the player would need to type into the computer to write the program and then save it to their own tape. According to Jennings this was because he was working at another job and did not have time to make copies of tapes to sell, as it was a difficult process at the time. Additionally, there was no commercial software market and most programs were distributed via printed source code in books and magazines to computer enthusiasts, the target audience of the game. After a couple months, Personal Software began selling paper tapes and cassette tapes of the program directly and through distributors, though the source code to the game was still included in the manual. Microchess was sold for $10 per copy, either US or Canadian; $12 for a copy that included a paper tape; and $13 for a cassette tape.[1]
The game was widely sold for KIM-1 computers, partially due to MOS Technology including advertisements for the game with the computer.[1] Jennings refused to sell the rights of the program to Chuck Peddle (president of MOS Technology) for $1000.[2] Reportedly some sales of the computer were specifically to play the game; according to Jennings, the price of the computer plus the game was similar to that of Fidelity Electronics's Chess Challenger (1977), the first dedicated chess computer. Versions of the game were released for many other microcomputer variants, with minimal changes as Jennings was not interested in making the program better, only selling it more widely. A version for the Altair 8800 was produced in April 1977, with the port done by Terry O'Brian, a member of the local Toronto computer club, and for that and later versions the source code was no longer printed in the manual as it was much longer than it had been for the KIM-1.[1]
In 1978, Jennings and Micro-Ware produced a dedicated chess computer version of the game, ChessMate, which was produced by Commodore International. Chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer considered licensing his name to the machine and spent time with Jennings playing against Microchess, but ultimately decided against it. That same year a version 2.0 of the game with black-and-white graphics was released for the Apple II and Atari 8-bit computers.[1] The game's engine was also licensed to Novag for its dedicated Chess Champion Mk II in 1979.[3] A final version of Microchess with color graphics was released for the TRS-80 Color Computer in 1980; as the successor to Micro-Ware, VisiCorp, did not deal with computer games at that time, Jennings did the port himself.[1]
Reception
Microchess was a major success for the late 1970s computer market. According to Jennings, it was the first computer game to be sold commercially, while video game and computer historians have termed it the first commercial computer game "not released by a hardware company" and the first commercial chess program for microcomputers.[1][4][5] Over 1000 copies of the game were sold by mid-1977, leading Jennings to quit his job and run Micro-Ware full-time.[1] The game's success grew as Jennings released it for more microcomputer systems and the overall microcomputer market expanded. The game made Micro-Ware over $1 million by 1978.[1] It sold 50,000 copies by 1979, the first software product to do so, and according to Jennings at one point copies of Microchess had been sold to 30% of computer owners in existence.[1][4][6] The majority of the copies sold in the 1970s were for the TRS-80, as Radioshack carried that version of the game in stores.[4] ChessMate also sold tens of thousands of copies. Over one million copies of the game in its various versions were sold by the mid-1980s, and the TRS-80 color chess version was sold into the early 1990s.[1]
BYTE in 1981 wrote that when chess programs such as Microchess appeared, "we all laughed and proceeded to demolish them ... microcomputer chess programs had a poor reputation".[7] Tim Harding in 1985 called Microchess "dreadful".[8]
Legacy
Microchess led to the creation of Micro-Ware, possibly the first software publishing company. In 1978, Micro-Ware merged with software publisher Personal Software, operated by Dan Fylstra, who had seen the game at the November 1976 show and bought the third-ever sold copy, with Fylstra and Jennings as co-owners. The resulting company, still named Personal Software, paid royalties to Jennings for Microchess, but Jennings soon funneled that money into funding the development of VisiCalc (1979), the first spreadsheet software. This led the company to rebrand as VisiCorp in 1982.[1]
Jennings later noted that Micro-Ware sold many more copies of the game for the KIM-1 and 6502 microcomputers than for the Altair 8080 microcomputers, despite the latter being much more popular. He attributes this to the more popular microcomputers having hobbyist clubs that shared software, while less popular microcomputer owners all had to purchase their own copies.[1]
As the source code was included with the game, Jennings encouraged players to write their own additions to the program. He claims that most additions were for supporting additional input or output types or adding the ability to recognize more chess openings than the limited memory of the base KIM-1 had allowed, and that no bugs or mistakes in the code were ever found.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 "Oral History of Peter Jennings". Computer History Museum. February 1, 2005. https://www.computerhistory.org/chess/orl-4334404555680/.
- ↑ Freiberger, Paul; Swaine, Michael (1984). Fire in the Valley. Berkeley, CA. USA: Osborne/McGraw-Hill. pp. 288. ISBN 0-88134-121-5.
- ↑ "Scisys and Novag : The Early Years". ChessComputerUK.com. http://www.chesscomputeruk.com/html/scisys_and_novag___the_early_y.html.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Smith, Alexander (November 19, 2019). They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. I: 1971-1982. CRC Press. pp. 363–364. ISBN 978-0-429-75261-2.
- ↑ "Microchess 1.5 running on a Radio Shack TRS-80 microcomputer". Computer History Museum. https://www.computerhistory.org/chess/stl-431e1a080c29f/.
- ↑ "Personal Software Introduces Backgammon & Checkers Programs". Intelligent Machines Journal: pp. 10. January 21, 1980. https://books.google.com/books?id=Lz4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA10. Retrieved January 22, 2015.
- ↑ Martellaro, John (January 1981). "The Newest Sargon - 2.5". BYTE: pp. 208–212. https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1981-01/1981_01_BYTE_06-01_Hand-held_Computers#page/n209/mode/2up. Retrieved October 18, 2013.
- ↑ Harding, T. D. (1985). The New Chess Computer Book. Pergamon Chess Series (2nd ed.). Pergamon Press. pp. 155. ISBN 9781483140322. https://books.google.com/books?id=pECeBQAAQBAJ&q=%22dreadful%20Microchess%22&pg=PA155.
External links
- Information on the history of Microchess, manuals, and complete source code
- KIM-1 source code at the Computer History Museum
- Microchess port to MS-Windows (in German)
 |  |
