‘Really Bad Chess’ Defies All Odds, Makes The Game Actually Interesting

  I remember the first PC I ever owned. It was a huge white mothereffin’ monstrosity of a thing, the size of the average studio apartment. The brand? Siemens Nixdorf (whoever they were). The OS? Windows 95. On this bad boy, I learned the elite clipart skills that every young professional needs to succeed in today’s world.  

Why am I telling you this? Because Really Bad Chess brings every fond memory I have of my Siemens Nixdorf flooding back. The ancient bastard came with a small crop of games, as all PCs do, and some legendary stuff it had too. Goddamn Minesweeper, that one with the stickman skiing down the slope, and of course, a barebones bare-assed chess sim.

Now, I’ve never been a chess playing sort of guy. In my family, board games only come out at Christmas over at ma and pa's when everyone’s drunk, and they’re usually something simple as hell like checkers. Nobody knows the rules of chess. Nobody ever. And even if they do, they don’t. Really Bad Chess knows this, and that’s why it’s actually something I can get behind.

What’s wrong with the above screenshot? It’d make Garry Kasparov foul his undercrackers in rage and confusion, that’s what. The twist with this iOS release is that players are given a random jumble of pieces at the start of the game. They each move according to conventional chess rules (although, as I say, no effer knows them), which makes for a brilliantly unbalanced slice of ridiculousness wrapped up in a retrotastic package.

Here’s Popo Gaming Channel to give you an ogle at the game in action.

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