Unicorns and Pegusus and Sharks and Snakes oh my.

March 15, 2011 9:55 PM

Claymation of the Roesch - Willi Schlage (Hamburg, 1910) chess game featuring fight scenes between the pieces. [SLYT]

The position after 13...Bh3, and the ones that follow, were used in Stanley Kubrick's movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" for the game between Frank Poole and the HAL-9000 Super Computer.

Game: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. Qe2 b5 6. Bb3 Be7 7. c3 O-O 8. O-O d5 9. exd5 Nxd5 10. Nxe5 Nf4 11. Qe4 Nxe5 12. Qxa8 Qd3 13. Bd1 Bh3 14. Qxa6 Bxg2 15. Re1 Qf3 16. Bxf3 Nxf3#

Via

posted by Mitheral (10 comments total)

That was nifty. Love how all the pieces moved in different, but consistent, ways.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:01 PM on March 15, 2011

That is so cool! Now if only the soundtrack had been done on the principle of this other chess post.
posted by Corduroy at 10:02 PM on March 15, 2011

Reminded me of Battle Chess. I wasted an enormous amount of time playing that game when I was a (lot) younger.
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 10:13 PM on March 15, 2011 [6 favorites]

KirpatrickMac, I would work on building elaborate custom games to coerce various pieces to fight each other. I remember one especially interesting fight between the king and the queen...
posted by tybstar at 10:20 PM on March 15, 2011

You kids and your Battle Chess. We only had Archon on our C64!

...Which this video reminded me of, and which I'd fantasized Archon to be like when I was downloading it from whatever BBS. If Archon had turned out anything like this, I may have stuck with the game. But I was a kid, what did I know, Battle Chess mumble mumble...
posted by not_on_display at 10:54 PM on March 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

liking this a lot!
posted by TheCoug at 3:07 AM on March 16, 2011

not_on_display -- wow. I don't always remember the basilisk in Archon kicking ass and taking names in such a decisive manner.
posted by HeroZero at 3:53 AM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

I thought the claymation itself was from 1910 and I was completely floored. I get it now. Still, very cool.
posted by DU at 4:36 AM on March 16, 2011

Wonderful!
posted by Wolfdog at 5:48 AM on March 16, 2011

That was really marvelous! Thank you for linking.
posted by stoneweaver at 10:50 AM on March 16, 2011