1984 JCE
Platform: Commodore VIC-20
After the recent amazing recovery of Garden Wars on the Commodore 64, our attention now turns to the lost VIC-20 edition of Chess Wars by the same company JCE, which was found in the same advert by Andrea Pachetti.
Advertised in various magazines for the unexpanded VIC-20, you play against the computer with nine levels of difficulty – all the special moves allowed by the rule set are made possible (Fabrizio, who suggested covering this title, assumes that they are referring to gambit, promoting pawns to higher pieces, casting and so forth.)
Another advert had the following details about the game in Italian magazine Sperimentare:
Finally it is possible to play chess on the VIC20 unexpanded. This program allows you to play with the calculator by selecting up to 9 difficulty levels. The program includes all special features such as,
promotion of pawn to queen, en-passant, castling established from the rulebook, and some standard opening moves: the Spanish game, the Sicilian defence, the French defence and the Orthodox Queen match. A fun way to spend the days in the company of your VIC20.
We’re not 100% certain if the game was ever released or not, or was just released in limited numbers. Considering what happened with Garden Wars, we think it is just missing and hope that it comes to light soon. If you know anything more about it – please do get in touch.
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni for highlighting the game to cover and for Andrea Pachetti for first finding the advert via his search for Garden Wars.
Gallery
Let’s credit Andrea Pachetti for point it out first: https://quattrobit.substack.com/p/garden-wars-un-lost-game-per-commodore
Apologies Fabrizio – cannot believe I forgot to mention Andrea. It was indeed from his Garden Wars article that the ad first came up. Fixing that right away!