Video Chess, programmed by Larry Wagner and Bob Whitehead with assistance from chess player Julio Kaplan, and published by Atari in 1979, offers full chess games viewed from above, with a cursor to select and move pieces instead of algebraic notation. The technical challenge was enormous: the eight-square-wide board far exceeded the hardware's limit of simultaneous sprites per line, until Whitehead developed the 'venetian blinds' technique, alternating each sprite's position between two different values on each scan line to trick the eye and display more pieces than were theoretically possible. More than four decades later, it's one of the most admired pieces of programming in the entire Atari 2600 catalog: a demonstration that even chess, with its demanding geometric board, could be solved on hardware meant for little more than a couple of rectangles moving across the screen.
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