I invented Star Chess around July/August 1977 when I was working as Technical Editor of a trade magazine in the UK called "New Electronics". This was around the time that the first serious microprocessor battle between Intel (with its 8080) and Motorola (with its 6800) was gathering force and lots of other companies (TI, MOS Technology, National Semiconductor, RCA ...) were also fighting to get into this market and everyone was talking about the amazing new applications that microprocessors would enable. New Electronics was by far the most successful professional electronics engineering publication in the UK at the time and I was unique among the people working for these kinds of publications in that I actually understood the technology. It sounds strange today but in the mid-70''s nobody expected the people writing for trade publications in areas such as electronics or chemicals or agriculture to actually know anything about the industry they were writing about$ you sifted through hundreds of press releases, decided which ones to print, then edited them down to a standard format. My immediate boss at New Electronics had a background in industrial chemistry but had no idea what a transistor was.

Because I had a degree in maths and physics and a background in electronic design, I was able to carve out a bit of a niche in the electronics reporting field. The inspiration for Star Chess came while I was visiting a semiconductor company (can''t remember which one - it may have been TI, which had a manufacturing site in Bedford at the time) and their marketing manager commented that with all the companies I was visiting and the inside information I had access to I was in a good position to come up with some new applications myself.

That was literally what happened. When I got home, I sat up late at the kitchen table thinking of all kinds of possible new applications for microprocessors. Music synthesisers were my main interest at the time but I rejected this route because it was clear that the performance of the available microprocessors wasn''t good enough. Toys were another area I considered (I had two young children at the time) but the problem there was that microprocessors were just too expensive at the time to be used in toys. I outlined a system for automating library borrowing using smart cards (also just recently invented) but rejected this because the smart card technology at the time was also expensive and unproven. So, finally, I decided to focus on video games: they were becoming more important commercially but they were mostly ping-pong type games that involved only hand-eye coordination. I thought there must be an opening for some kind of strategy-based game. This all happened soon after the first "Star Wars" film (July 1977), which I didn''t see but knew that it was very popular. So, that night, I decided to invent a new video game, based on chess but involving "Star Wars" aspects. I kept the basic chess pieces but renamed them and introduced the ability to fire at opponents and warp into hyperspace. This was because I am not a good chess player and don''t have the attention span to look beyond the next move or two. So the idea of being able to defeat an opponent''s carefully executed strategy by invoking luck appealed to me.

By the time I went to bed (very late!), I had two handwritten pages that simply outlined the rules of the game.

By coincidence, a few days later I attended a press conference given by Videomaster and met their marketing director, Derek Martin. I decided to approach them as they seemed to be the only UK-based video games manufacturer. They were immediately interested and we signed a licence agreement (about a week before Christmas 1977) that gave them exclusive worldwide rights to Star Chess. The actual technical development was done by a firm called Dalton, Viewing $ Whitsey based in Coventry. They decided to use the Motorola 6800 microprocessor and the resulting order was at the time the biggest order anywhere in the world for microprocessors$ I remember we had a press conference to announce this. The game was launched with a massive champagne laser press breakfast with a guest TV celebrity, Magnus Pyke.

After that, everything went wrong. The game was not a commercial success, although it certainly gained a cult following. It was priced at £70 in the shops (far too high at the time) and there were rumours of high failure rates. Videomaster encountered financial problems and were acquired by Waddingtons. This was a company mainly known at the time for greetings cards and board games but it wanted to get into electronic games. Their acquisition of Videomaster was conditional upon me signing a new licence agreement transferring Videomaster''s rights to Star Chess to Waddingtons. I agreed to this but the window of opportunity had already closed. Waddingtons lost a lot of money and Star Chess became history.

I didn''t do badly out of it - about £70,000 over a few years for two pages of hand-written concept description that was the result of five or six hours work - but who knows what might have happened if I''d chosen a different company to commercialise it?

I used to play this at a friends house back in the 80''s.
Their family went through at least 3 of these consoles over the years. I remember their dad saying he was getting them cheap for about £50 a throw. (and that was cheap back in the day)


And nowadays i am the very proud owner of one of my own. After buying one boxed in mint condition on a carboot for a Fiver a couple of years ago.
I will never be selling it!


Pete G: If that is true. Then thank you for your contribution towards many fun times and fond memories!

Peter, if you are still interested in doing an on line version, I''d love to have a go, and even looking at perhaps porting it to the ZX Spectrum Next as that has . I''ve been doing development for far too many years to remember so think its very viable :). Was thinking this would make either a JavaScript browser based or go the full hog and Unity. If you have a website/email I can $ you a message. Got 2 machines working now.(tough display needs a composite mod really) and hopefully a 3rd.