Games Gallery

Shogi is the Japanese form of Chess. It is my favorite regional variant. Although Zillions of Games came with Shogi, it didn't play well, and the graphics had more Japanese characters on them than I cared for. So I implemented a new version with some help from Steve Evans, whose Shogi Variants program had first introduced me to Shogi before Zillions was ever released. This implementation provided westernized boards and several different piece sets. It also played better than the version that came with Zillions. But it still didn't play well enough. I finally bought an inexpensive commercial program for Shogi, which plays significantly better than I do, and which has good Japanese graphics and a good user interface.

Xiang Qi is the Chinese form of Chess. It introduces one of my favorite pieces, the Cannon. My interest in Chess variants was renewed mainly through Battle Chess II, which played Chinese Chess with animated graphics. I loved the graphics and animation, but it played poorly. When I got Zillions of Games, it included an implementation of Chinese Chess, and it played well enough to beat me, but it had very poor graphics. The image to the left is from the graphics makeover I gave to the Zillions of Games implementation. I've also created westernized piece sets for the game, but in making Chinese pieces, I learned to easily recognize them all.

Hostage Chess was created by a Canadian Professor of Philosophy named John Leslie. It was featured in David Pritchard's book Popular Chess Variants, and Pritchard has described it as the Chess variant of the decade. I agree with Pritchard that this is an excellent game. I consider it on a par with Clockwork Orange Chess, which is my favorite among my own games. Hostage Chess is like Chessgi but designed to be played with a single set of Chess pieces. Instead of dropping captured pieces on the board, a player exchanges captured pieces for his own captured pieces, which he may then drop on the board. Among Chess variants that can be played with nothing but a single Chess set, this one is my favorite.

This is my favorite Chess variant. And this is the one favorite of mine that cannot be played against a computer. This commericial variant is a deck of cards that modify the rules of Chess. This game requires creativity and ingenuity of a sort that a computer is incapable of. It's a wild game that is different every time.

Smess was a Parker Brothers game from the 1970s. It is a simplified Chess variant for children, in which the directions pieces can move are shown by arrows on spaces. This game is one of my favorites mainly because of its excellent graphics and sense of humor. Parker Brothers later released a dulled-down version of the same game called All the King's Men. It's really more fun with Ninnies, Numskulls, Brains, and the silliness of the Smess board. I implemented this game for Zillions, carefully basing my graphics on the original Smess graphics and pieces. But I drew everything myself without any outright copying of the original work.