Video Chess 2025 is a direct port and reimplementation of Atari’s original 4 KB chess engine, adapted for the Commodore 64 and VIC-20. It supports all chess rules, including castling, en passant, pawn promotion, and checkmate.
Video Chess is a chess game released by Atari in November 1979 for the Atari VCS / 2600, programmed by Larry Wagner and Bob Whitehead.
Features
- Active screen while AI is thinking
- Doubled pixels for character graphics
- Flattened aspect ratio
- Purple background indicates edit mode
- Sound effects remain, but have been slightly modified
What makes this port special is that, unlike most chess programs which require RAM expansion, it runs on an unexpanded VIC 20, making it one of the very few, if not the only, chess games playable on a stock machine without additional RAM.
Although not as powerful as Sargon II, Video Chess shows exceptional optimization even under strict limitations.
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