Microchess

Microchess for the Kim-1 was the first game program sold for home computers. After six months of development, the first copy was shipped on December 18, 1976.

In preparation for the 2002 Vintage Computer Festival, I powered up the same Kim-1 used to write the original program and loaded Microchess into memory.

The program and data required all of the Kim-1's memory ... 1K. How things have changed in the past quarter century.

The Toronto Star, December 22, 1976, covered the story of hobbyist computing and revealed a few facts. In the US, there were 300 tiny computer stores selling systems for about the cost of a high end stereo - $1,000 to $2,000. The Kim-1, one of the smallest hobbyist computers, sold for $245. Byte Magazine claimed a circulation of 73,000 readers.

But Computer Place owner, Murray Desnoyer, did not expect hobbyist computing to amount to more than 5% of his business.

Over the next ten years, several million copies of Microchess were sold to owners of home computers purchased from Apple, Tandy, Commodore and lesser known companies such as Processor Technology, Imsai, Cromemco, Polymorphic Systems, MITS, Ohio Scientific, and many more.