…what?
It’s somewhat important to remember that when home video games were new, pretty much every video game was revolutionary. Being able to move things around on your TV was so cool that it didn’t really matter what it was you were doing. As a result, Atari could churn out basically anything and it would sell like gangbusters. That, my loyal readers, is how we ended up with Video Checkers.
See this image? That’s the whole game. It’s checkers. I don’t even know what to do from here, because I’ve shown you everything.
See?! It’s still just checkers! To make matters worse, it appears my copy of this is the text-label variant, which means I don’t even own the best version of Video Checkers, which is definitely the one with this artwork:
Atari really did a remarkable job of having box art that made their games look amazing – just look at this majestic King of Checkers, watching proudly over his domain, where a young, constipated Luke Skywalker proudly grips a piece with his freakish, oddly-jointed fingers. Now compare that to this, another totally unique screenshot from Video Checkers:
Okay, I lied – this is just the first screenshot again. It’s checkers. It isn’t even particularly good checkers, as it’s nearly impossible to control and move pieces the way you want to. There are numerous difficulty levels, but the limited hardware of the 2600 means the more advanced AI takes an astonishingly long time to think things through, going for multiple minutes at a time at its worst. It’s pretty remarkable that a game that can do that got released, even in the late ‘70s.
In the event that you somehow need more Atari checkers options, there is also an Activision game simply titled Checkers that’s a bit harder to find, and supposedly better, but it’s still checkers. You know what you’re getting.
Did you know that in 34 Retro Roulettes, I’ve now gotten more games about checkers than I have games for the SNES? I have nearly 150 of those, and yet here we are, reviewing a dumb piece of crap called Video Checkers, a game that really is just checkers.
As the first screenshot (again) will tell you – it is checkers.
On a historical note, Video Checkers can now celebrate being stupid and pointless for 40 years! That’s more than you can say about Bubsy 3D or even the Atari Pac-Man. Give it a round of applause for this extremely well-deserved achievement.
Next week’s game is not checkers.