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Rating: Average
Before I talk about the game itself, let's take a moment to recognize
the masters of marketing at Titus Software for their brilliant work with
Virtual Chess 64. It's like chess, only it's on a TV screen instead of a
chess board, and it's for the Nintendo 64. Thus the shockingly-creative
title "Virtual Chess 64" which is still sending shock-waves through the
industry. Next, the box art, often a key element to attracting the
attention of the consumer. Did Titus invest their money into getting a
license with a world-famous chess player so they could plaster him all over
the box and appeal to the legions of chess-players out there in the world?
No, but they did plaster a drawing of a woman and her cleavage, a woman who
looks like the witch in Snow White and has absolutely no relevance to the
game. There's two words I never thought I would say in the same sentence,
chess and cleavage. I guess they figured, "If Eidos can plaster an... uh...
well-endowed woman on the box and make a huge success out of a crap game,
why can't we?" but that is a topic for another review. I think you get the
idea here. If the term "burning sarcasm" were to apply to real life, my
computer screen would be on fire.
Anyway, the game itself isn't much better than the extensive title and
box art work Titus did. It's not a question of how good the game of chess
is, because if you didn't like chess before, this game certainly isn't
going to change your mind. Instead it's a matter of how well Titus
implemented the game of chess into a video game, and unfortunately the
answer is "very poorly." One nice feature of the game is its extremely
in-depth tutorial which introduces chess newbies to every single rule of
the game, even obscure ones you will probably never need to know. One
feature that could have been really cool was the inclusion of Grand Master
chess matches that took place and were carefully recorded throughout the
years. However, for some reason these matches are often interrupted
and the player is forced to make the "right" move, and the game won't
continue until you finally get it right. This is very annoying, but not
nearly as annoying as accidentally pressing the B button and aborting the
match.
The sound is so pathetic that I couldn't bear it and had to turn it off.
There are annoying sound effects for everything you can imagine, even
cancelling your move-in-progress during a game and being treated with a
particularly annoying sound effect. And whose bright idea was it to make
music play while the game is going on? Who the heck wants to listen to any
music while they are trying to think about their next chess move, much less
music that horrible?
Virtual Chess 64 is the first chess game on the Nintendo 64, and
hopefully it is also the last. Chess fans would be much better off
whipping out a good old fashioned chess board and playing with a friend or
family member.
© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com