Editing Battle Chess (section)

== Gameplay ==
[[File:ST Battle Chess.png|thumb|left|Atari ST screenshot]]

''Battle Chess'' follows the same rules as traditional chess, with [[chess piece|piece]]s moving in an animated fashion and battles playing out so that the capturing piece defeats its target. Furthermore, when [[checkmate]] is delivered, the checkmating piece fights and defeats the king. Since there are six types of pieces for each color, and a king cannot check (let alone capture) another king, there are a total of 35 different battle animations.<ref name = "CGW">{{Cite news | date = Feb 1989 | last = St. Andre | first = Ken | authorlink = Ken St. Andre | magazine = [[Computer Gaming World]] | title =Low Blows and Other Winning Moves | issue = 56 | page = 27}}</ref> The [[Rook (chess)|rook]], for example, turns into a [[Golem|rock monster]] and kills a pawn by smashing its head, and the rook kills the queen by eating her. There are some pop-culture homages; the knight versus knight animation references the [[black knight]] fight in ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]'', and the king versus bishop fight pastiches the short battle between [[Indiana Jones (character)|Indiana Jones]] and a swordsman in ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark]]''.

The game can be also played in a 2D version with no animations, and the [[Amiga CDTV]] version has a fully voiced introduction describing the movements of the pieces for the benefit of beginners. Digitized sound is used in the MS-DOS version for all battle sound effects and is played through the [[PC speaker]], without the need for a sound card, using a technique akin to [[RealSound]].

''Battle Chess'' can be played against a human opponent (by [[hotseat (multiplayer mode)|hotseat]], [[null modem]] or over a [[local area network]] in some ports) or against the computer's [[artificial intelligence]] (AI).<ref name="CGW"/> The game has an [[Chess opening book (computers)|opening library]] of over 30,000 moves (which were not available for the [[Commodore 64]] and [[Apple II]] versions). {{clear left}}