Atari 2600 Game
Produced by: Atari
Model Number: CX2636
Rarity: 2 Common
Year of Release: 1980
Programmer: Carol Shaw
Throw away your checkerboard, you aren't going to need it anymore. Now that you have a copy of Video Checkers for the Atari 2600. Play checkers anytime against the computer (or a friend).
Video Checkers was the second Checkers game released for the Atari 2600 (the first was Activision's Checkers). Atari spent a little more time getting this game right (after the relative failure of Video Chess, plus Video Checkers had the 2 player mode that Video Chess was oddly lacking). The AI in Video Checkers was far less CPU intensive than that of Video Chess, making it possible to actually play this game on the higher difficulty levels (it still takes way too long on the highest level though). Activision's Checkers did feature a better AI, but Atari decided to add Give Away Checkers as one of the gameplay options (that is where you try to lose).
The high replay value makes this one of Atari's better titles (everybody knows how to play checkers).
The game manual actually goes into some detail about how the AI was programmed, I am including a short excerpt from that section here.
When computing its next move, the computer does what is called a "tree
search" using "alpha-beta" pruning. What this means is that the
computer picks a move, then picks a countermove by its opponent.
Depending on the difficulty level, the computer continues making moves
and countermoves. At some point, it evaluates the board to see how
many pieces each side has, and what sort of position the pieces are in.
The computer does this for various combinations of moves and picks the
move which will be most advantageous of itself, assuming that its
opponent will do the same. Alpha-beta pruning is a technique which is
used to reduce the number of moves which must be examined.
The following Chart (taken from the instruction manual). Shows how long the computer takes to calculate moves (and how many moves the
AI is looking ahead).
GAME MATRIX
-----------
____________________________________________________________
| | | | |
| Game | Number of | Number of Piles | Approximate |
| Number | Players | of Computer | Time for |
| | | Lookahead | Move |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 1/2 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 4 | 1 | 4 | 5 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 5 | 1 | 5 | 10 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 6 | 1 | 6 | 30 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 7 | 1 | 7 | 1 min |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 8 | 1 | 8 | 4 min |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 9 | 1 | 9 | 15 min |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 10 | 2 | --- | ------ |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 11 | 1 | 1 | 1 1/2 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 12 | 1 | 2 | 2 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 13 | 1 | 3 | 3 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 14 | 1 | 4 | 4 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 15 | 1 | 5 | 6 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 16 | 1 | 6 | 14 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 17 | 1 | 7 | 30 sec |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 18 | 1 | 8 | 2 min |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
| | | | |
| 19 | 1 | 9 | 8 min |
|__________|_____________|___________________|_______________|
Collectors Information
The box to this game features some of that classic Atari art (several well illustrated images, that are all blended together). In this case it is several pictures of medieval kings and children playing checkers.
There were 2 different label variations on this title (1 with a picture and 1 with text). Sears also produced a clone of this game entitled Checkers. This game is valued at around $3 USD. As always, games with boxes and manuals are worth more.