Star Wars Chess


Star Wars Chess is a 1993 chess-playing video game developed by The Software Toolworks, based on the Star Wars film franchise and published by Mindscape for MS-DOS, Sega CD and Windows 3.x.

Plot

The story takes place sometime between the start and end of the Galactic Civil War between the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire. The two forces establish an uneasy truce and decide to settle this with a game of chess in order to determine who holds the future for the galaxy.

Gameplay

The game follows the classic rules of chess. The player can play either as the Rebel Forces or the Dark Side. The chess pieces are portrayed as characters which match the rank of the chess piece. For the Rebel Forces, Luke Skywalker is the king, Princess Leia is the queen, C-3PO is the bishop, Chewbacca is the knight, Yoda is the rook, and R2-D2 is the pawn. For the Dark Side, Emperor Palpatine is the king, Darth Vader is the queen, Boba Fett is the bishop, Tusken Raiders are the knights, AT-ST's are the rooks, and the Stormtroopers are the pawns. When one chess piece takes an opposing one, a brief battle scene shows the chess piece character defeating the opponent.

Reception

Computer Gaming World concluded that and Star Wars Chess "are examples of marketing at its best ".
Mega Magazine giving Star Wars Chess a 60 percent rating stating “The chances are that if you take your chess at all seriously, you wouldn’t really enjoy this.”
In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Star Wars Chess the 49th-worst computer game ever released stating: “Proof that there really is no intelligent life even in a galaxy far, far away”.