- Estimated Rating 1750
- Magnetic chess pieces
- Saves game in memory
- Piece-storage compartment
Product Description
Double your fun with two games in one. Now you can enjoy an exciting game of chess or checkers in one electronic game. With an even larger interactive LCD display, over 72 levels of chess and 16 levels of checkers, King Arthur is challenging and entertaining for players of all strengths or you can match your skills against the game’s computer chip. Excalibur’s exclusive, five-step teaching mode helps anyone improve his or her game. Includes LCD window, piece-storage compartment, and magnetic sensory board.
Features:
- Estimated rating: 1750
- Magnetic chess pieces
- Save game in memory
- Piece-storage compartment
Requires 4 “AA” alkaline batteries (not included).
The unit would only occasionally allow castling and for some reason or other it endowed the King with the ability to move multiple squares in one move. It’s a shame it didn’t work right because otherwise it seemed like a pretty decent device.
Amazon Rating: 1 / 5
This isn’t for the new learner. It is great for a child who enjoys chess and needs experience playing but doesn’t have anyone willling or able to play for hours. It is a little challenging to figure out so I don’t recommend for anyone under 10.
Amazon Rating: 4 / 5
This was a father’s day present for my husband. At first he said it was not suited for him. He thought it was for kids. But once he started moving up in levels he can’t put it down. He uses it almost everyday and he is very pleased with it. It works fine but he would have loved if it was not battery operated. Even though the batteries last a long time he would have preferred a power cord. Other than that he loves this product especially the compartment to hold the chess pieces.
Amazon Rating: 5 / 5
Forget about the chess for a minute, this is the almost the only set that lets you play checkers against a computer with real pieces, so you can study what you’re doing. Overall it’s 10″ by 12″ could be rested on your lap but meant for a tabletop. 8″ by 8″ playing area, meaning 1″ squares, 5/8″ diameter magnetic checkers that are just right for the board but big enough to handle easily. Of course you get magnetic plastic chess pieces.
In addition to playing full games against the machine, you can set up any chess or checkers position, and play out the situation againt the computer. It’s really good way to go over practice examples or chess puzzles from books. Of course checkers is so dead there are no instruction books anymore, but you can find some public domain works online that you can print out, search for “Checkers Made Easy” by Arthur Reisman, also try [...]
The chess program obviously isn’t grand master level, but it plays fair and makes logical moves. Fine for a beginner up to intermediate, I guess. Another review on Amazon gives a rating number. It also has a fun and instructive “Training Mode” for chess where you play against the computer with just your kings and your pawns, to learn how to handle pawns with no distractions, then just kings, pawns and bishops, then kings, pawns and rooks, etc. Lets a student see the moves of each piece very clearly.
(Another review mentioned TROUBLE CASTLING, the trick might be that you have to MOVE THE KING FIRST, so the computer knows what you are doing. If you move the rook first, the computer thinks you only wanted to move the rook, end of turn.)
But, CHECKERS is the reason to have this, the checkers program plays well enough to have some fun and really learn how to play, not just push around the pieces like I did as a kid. Checkers is deep, it’s not as complicated as chess, but that doesn’t make it exactly easy. I can see some patterns in the way the checkers program works, so it ain’t a master level program either, but it plays well enough to kick your butt if you don’t know what you’re doing. Out of the 7 possible opening moves for black, it always responds to 11-15 with 24-19, which means you gotta jump, then you get jumped, each side loses and piece, and then the computer starts really playing. To each of the other 6 openings, it always replies with 22-18, every time, no matter what level. But, you can get around this if you are really into checkers, by programming the starting position at two or 3 moves into the game, to study other opening situations, or just to get a better game started.
The good points are:
1. Let’s you set up any game in progress or example postion, for you to play against the computer, or you can have the computer choose the moves for each side by prssing the “hint” button each time it’s your turn, to “solve” a problem.
2. Special training setups for chess that teach how to handle each piece.
3. It plays CHECKERS, man, that’s fun.
Other nice things, it lets you take back a move, it lets you play either black or white against the computer or have the computer play itself, it stores the current positions in memory when you turn it off. You can retrive that info from the memory in case the pieces have been disturbed. Mine still works after 3 years (a lot of time on a shelf, then sometimes used for a few weeks) Low drain on batteries.
Room for Improvement:
1. The checkers are black and red, red and white would be easier to see on the black squares. They won’t change that, so I painted my black checkers white.
2. The squares are marked for chess co-ordinates (a1 through h8) but not with checker numbering, which is 1 through 32 on the black squares only. They ain’t gonna change that either, so I wrote those numbers in on the squares with a fine tip silver paint marker.
3. On my unit the foam pad on the inside of the battery compartment cover did not press the 3 AAs in tightly enough, resulting in intermittent loss of when the batteries wiggled around. I fixed that by cutting a folded piece of paper towel to lay on top of the batteries and take up the slack, press the batteries into the holder a wee bit tighter.
I like this it’s a lot of fun, an advanced chess player might want a more advanced program to play against, but but for anyone else you get a decent game of chess, PLUS the checkers. I got mine at one of the large chain toy stores, these things are all over, as Excalibur and also under “Einstein” and other brand names, maybe a different box, different brand name sticker on the unit, if it says checkers and chess and it’s under [...], identical unit. I think mine was about [...] at toys are us, I’m sure it wasn’t over [...].
Amazon Rating: 4 / 5
This is an ok product, was hard to figure out how to set the electronics part. Mainly it wasn’t worth what I paid for it. I could see 20.00 no more.
Amazon Rating: 2 / 5