Wii Chess: The game you haven’t heard of
Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 10:00am by Blake
Wikipedia enlightened me just today.
Wii Chess is an upcoming video game for the Wii console. It is currently in development by Nintendo and set for release on 18 January 2008 in Europe. First information of the game was revealed on 12 December 2007. The game will be released cheaper in Europe and will be a budget title. Players can also play online courtesy of Nintendo Wi-fi Connection.
For the record, I will pwn any challengers when this gets released.
December 13th, 2007 at 10:14 am
At first glance i thought it was called “Wii Snatch”
December 13th, 2007 at 10:28 am
This looks like a perfect fit for WiiWare, how big can a chess game be? I don’t understand why they would release this a disc…
December 13th, 2007 at 11:09 am
“Wii Snatch”
Schach is German.
Indeed it would be perfect for WiiWare, but maybe there was no WiiWare when they planed the distribution for that game. Or they dont expect the buyers of it to know WiiWare or have WLAN at home.
December 13th, 2007 at 11:09 am
I don’t see why they would release a chess game outside a compilation of other board games.
December 13th, 2007 at 11:25 am
I agree - this would’ve been a great candidate for Wii Ware. Especially since that would’ve let us enjoy a quick game of Chess without having to change discs.
But Nintendo probably felt that releasing Wii Chess as a disc-based game would give it better visibility, increasing both sales and recognition. Branding the game with both the Wii (ie: Wii Sport, Wii Fit, Wii Music, Wii Chess) and Touch Generation names on the box lends support to this guess.
I just hope that they make good use of the extra space! There is a lot that of potential with a game like this, *maybe* including some of the following features?
– A versatile coaching mode, that assesses your skill level and offers exercises to help improve your game.
– Given the name, I fully expect the game to include daily tips, rankings, and chess puzzles so that we can see how our ability improves with practice.
– An annotated database of some “famous” chess games would be a good way to make use of the available disc space.
– Some chess variants would be easy (and free) to include with the package… and options like Bughouse Chess would even provide support for fun 4-player matches.*
– A “playable museum” (showcasing games like Shogi and Xiang Qi) could help to show how Chess evolved into different games around the world.
– Finally, there is no reason that we should be forced to read everything. C’mon Nintendo, give us the option for spoken audio this time around!
I’m not really expecting all, or even most, of those features to arrive in a budget title… but it sure wouldn’t hurt.
*Anyone interested in Chess variants should check out this website:
http://www.chessvariants.com/Gindex.html
December 13th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I won´t pay more than $10 bucks for chess, unless it has some surprises.
I´m guessin this is being released in a disc since the “casuals” which are the target for this game, would never hear of it if they don´t have their Wii´s wired into the net.
December 13th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
All I want is Wii Scrabble and DS Scrabble. Forget Chess.
December 13th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
I had heard about it… It was Nintendo’s only announcement at Leipzig.
December 13th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
So, what’s the Wii angle? Do you grab and move the pieces with the remote? Do the pieces are made up from your Mii characters? WHAT?!?
December 13th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I think this might work out a lot better on the Wii than on any of the other platforms. The Wii is for casual gamers of all ages and I could easily see some of the older members of my family buying this.
December 13th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Chess Online…Oh this challenge’s so ON!
Also animated pieces would be apreciated if not online will definetively sufice..
December 13th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
I fail to see why this isn’t a WiiWare, and I don’t care if it has more ‘visibility’.
December 13th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
would you need FCs to play online?
December 13th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
“For the record, I will pwn any challengers when this gets released.”
I look forward to the challenge Blake!
@ejamer,
If they made the game you describe. I would pay full price.
Also, I hope they have a set of chess pieces with Mario characters, with mario as white king and Bowser as black King, maybe Link as the Knight or something like that, white pawns could be pikmin, or toads/toadettes and black pawns could be goombas or koopas, would be great.
December 14th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Schach games are really popular in Europe. There are a lot for DS, a lot of games with Nintendo WFC. I haven’t tried any, but they look ok.
December 15th, 2007 at 5:29 am
@ Brain
Not sure of its available in the US, but here in the UK we’ve had DS Scrabble for a few months now:
http://www.game.co.uk/DS/Puzzle/~r331417/Scrabble-2007-New-Edition/
December 15th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Awesome! I’ve been wanting to learn chess, and now on my Wii and with online multi-player this looks like it’ll be a great buy.