Long before Chris Abbott was busy creating some of the biggest C64 music events in history with stars such as Ben Daglish, Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, David Whittaker and many many other big names – Chris was busy trying to break into the C64 industry by creating game music.
Chess was one such title that Chris had offered to him to compose the music. All of this he did, with slight variations which can be found in HVSC and also here.
For reasons currently unknown, the game got cancelled and was never seen or heard of again. What was strange was that there was a 1984 Superior Software Chess game, which seems like it was unrelated.
We did speak to Superior Software many moons ago, and they didn’t recall there being an updated version of the Chess game. However, Martin/Stadium64 has highlighted a very good point that Alligata Software had released Cyrus II in 1987 – but just a year later had sold up and the name/back catalogue was sold to Superior Software.
Could it be that Superior Software then decided to do an update of Cyrus II (i.e. Cyrus III)? The time lines match and it seems like a good suggestion so far – certainly more than what we have to go on at the moment.
In July 2023, Triad preserved the Superior Software 1984 edition of the game (which was yet to be preserved until now), though the version with Chris’ music is still very much at large. We’ve added the 1984 edition for the time being.
If you know anything more, then please do get in touch! Who was the coder of Cyrus II for instance?
Contributions: Chris Abbott, David Hill, Sean O'Neill, Martin/Stadium64, Jazzcat, Triad, David Hill
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Game_Chess(SuperiorEdition1984) (zip)
- Music_Chess.zip (zip)
Gallery
Update history
- 16/07/23 – 1984 edition of game from Superior Software found and added.
- 01/06/23 – Tidied up the page, and potential links to Cyrus II added.
- 01/10/15 – Added scan of 1984 released edition.
Hi Frank
Someone posted about Chess from Superior Software over at Lemon today. That got my attention so I did some digging around the Chess entry on GTW64
I believe it could be possible that it was Cyrus II Chris Abbott composed the music for?
That one was released by Alligata Software in 1987, but in the beginning of Alligata (1984) they was also refered to Superior Systems.
The company name Superior Systems is mentioned in the first releases from Alligata.
Tim Mahony took over the day-to-day running of the company in 1987 and closed the company nine months later. The name and back catalogue were sold to….. Superior Software.
So it is a strong connection between those 2 companies!
Could ofcourse be a possiblity of another chessgame, why not a Cyrus III ? with music & some other enhancements based on Cyrus II ?
I think you could be onto something Martin! It’s a shame that Chris never saw the Chess game that was being worked on, but the timelines match up for when Alligata was sold to Superior Systems, and a Cyrus III would make sense perhaps. It’s a shame there is no coder listed for Cyrus II, as then the coder could be asked if they worked on a different version.
Going to quickly tidy up the write up too – looks like it was written by a 18yr old me…