Computer Chess

Prototype ROM
Unreleased
Owned and dumped by Marco K.



This one went unreleased for a long, long time. So far, two copies of this game have been found. The first was found back in 1997 by a gent named Roagie, who aquired the game in a box of games given to him by Nolan Bushnell himself. The cart was a game that was similar to the commercially released game Computer Chess, with the exceptions of the game having the board coordinates on the game screen and the computer making wacky sounds to go along with the psychadellic colors on the screen while the computer was thinking. Roagie chose to not release this ROM, and the curiosity went on. In 2001 however, Marco K. came into possession of a different version of Chess as a prototype board. After dumping the ROM and having it posted on AtariAge, Roagie confirmed that Marco had indeed discovered a second copy of Computer Chess, and now we all get to try it!

Well, like I said above, the game's not all that different than Video Chess, and is infact referred to in many places as a prototype version of Video Chess. One other oddity about the copy of the game that Roagie discovered is that the game had an end label on it - something that prototypes rarely have. It almost makes you wonder if at one time his proto had a label on it or not, but more than likely it had the end label to be played at a game kiosk, where the game was already plugged in, and the top label would not be seen. Either way, it's still an oddity among prototypes...


View the fullsize cart scan. (From Roagie)
View the fullsize end label. (From Roagie)
View the fullsize PCB front. (From Marcos)
View the PCB back. (From Marcos)

Roagie's scans provided by AtariAge
Marco's scans provided by Marco

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