The Chessmaster
System: SNES
Release Date: September 1991
Developer: The Software Toolworks
Publisher: Mindscape
Genre: Strategy
Check, check, check… checkmate, I’m The Chessmaster! Over the past three months, I’ve been casually playing on chess.com and am hovering around a 700 ELO ranking. I plan to reach 1000 in the next few months. Wish me luck. I may make some videos cataloging my bonehead moves. Can’t hurt to further dilute the channel, right?
You’re thrust into a game immediately upon pressing the Start Button. You get an angled view of the board that I honestly didn’t care for too much. Pick your piece with the hand cursor and move them where they should go. If you try to move where you can’t, you’ll get a warning.
Pressing the Select Button brings you to the options menu. You can change the level of the computer. You can change the view of the board between 3D, 2D, and the War Room with some more information available. If you want to play as black, you need to begin a game and then change sides. I’m not going to lie, playing the Chessmaster made me feel awful about my chess skill, so I’ll go back to chess.com and grow my ELO.
Graphics: 1.0
The graphics aren’t good. They don’t impress me at all.
Sound: 1.0
The music is default at off and for very good reason. The music and sound effects are annoying.
Gameplay: 2.0
It’s chess. The cursor movement is slow and pressing the B Button should be a cancel to a move, but it isn’t.
Difficulty: 1.5
The computer is hard to beat. Maybe I should just get better at chess.
Fun Factor: 2.0
If you want to play chess, don’t have internet, and don’t have friends, this will do.
Overall Rating: 1.5
The Chessmaster earns a C-. This is chess, but the computer is very difficult even on level one, so I hope you’re good.