Videomaster Star Chess

Summary

Star Chess is a telegame from the British company Videomaster, which differs from the other games of the time, because the console contains only one game: chess. The game goes back to Peter Gebler, whom the movie “Star Wars” (1977) inspired to develop chess as a video game, but to upgrade it to sci-fi elements. On the board, for example, the characters are shaped like spaceships, the shape is roughly reminiscent of the chess pieces. Other spaceships can be shot down in order to finally defeat the king (called commander). If you are hit and the damage is too high, you will be put in a new place, but you can protect yourself with shield. After Gebler noted the idea on two pages, Videomaster happened to hold a press conference a few days later, and Gebler introduced his idea to marketing director Derek Martin. He liked the concept, Videomaster acquired the worldwide usage rights and developed the console in collaboration with Dalton, Viewing & Whitsey from Coventry (now Itronix). The manufacturer chose a solution based on the Motorola 6500 chip (CPU, RAM and I/O are combined). Two detachable silver controllers controlled the figures for the two players; a single player mode is not provided.

When the color console in Great Britain was introduced with great marketing and the well-known science journalist and television presenter Magnus Pyke in 1979, everything went wrong: With about 70 British pounds the video game was too expensive, and then when Videomaster came into financial trouble, it was bought by Waddingtons, because the company wanted to enter the market for electronic games; but in the end it also cost Waddingtons a lot of money. The game itself has been converted to other consoles (such as Emerson Arcadia) and still finds lovers there today. The console is now rare.