"You'd have more fun playing with yourself..."

Intro:

Colossus Chess 4 was a colossal failure. Released in 1985 for the Commodore 64, it's about as entertaining as playing Chess with yourself; but with headache-inducing beeps!

Graphics:3/10

For such an early Commodore 64 game, the graphics are bearable. There are two colours in the entire game, excluding the title screen, and the pieces are very basic. Pawns are just outlines, as are castles. Your "cursor" is nothing but a black or white line in the middle of a square. Queens are really ugly crowns. Bearable, yes, but well below mediocre...

Sound:1/10

You've got an entire two sound effects; beep and boop(I think a heard a "blip" once, too). They're not too annoying at first, but they're played about five times every move. If you don't have a headache halfway through the game, you're probably deaf.

Gameplay:5/10

The gameplay's alright; about as good as twenty-year-old virtual Chess gets. At first glance, it seems you can only play as White; the option to play as Black is never mentioned anywhere, and the only way to do it is to press an otherwise useless key you never would've touched. Also, the game is strictly one-player, despite the fact that a C64 could easily handle a two-player Chess game. The game follows most of the rules pretty well; every piece does what it's supposed to, and if you try to make an illegal move you get an annoying beep and the word "Illegal" appears below the board.

You seem to have infinite time to make a move, though, which greatly decreases the already meager challenge. That brings me to the subject of the computer AI. It's alright, but the computer player takes a surprisingly long time to make a move and can be easily beaten with some basic strategies. Honestly, I've seen better AI in games made by beginner programmers.

There's something really odd about this game. By pressing one of the Fire buttons, you can change any enemy piece or empty square into a white pawn. Changing the enemy King into a pawn makes it impossible to win, by the way.

There is only one other aspect to the game, and it's pretty much just a timer. With a press of one of the fire buttons, you're brought to a screen where you can see the time it's taken you to make your moves, along with scores and a few things that don't make any sense to me.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 04/11/06