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Illustration of Sargon II

Sargon II

Overview

The original SARGON was written by Dan and Kathleen 'Kathe' Spracklen in a Z80-based computer called Wavemate Jupiter III using assembly language through TDL Macro Assembler.

The name was originally written entirely in capitals because early computer operating systems such as CP/M did not support lower-case file names.

SARGON was introduced at the 1978 West Coast Computer Faire where it won the first computer chess tournament held strictly for microcomputers, with a score of 5-0. This success encouraged the authors to seek financial income by selling the program directly to customers. Since magnetic media were not widely available at the time, the authors placed an advert in Byte Magazine and mailed $15 photocopied listings that would work in any Z80-based microcomputer. Availability of the source code allowed porting to other machines. For example, the March–April 1979 issue of Recreational Computing describes a project that converted Sargon to an 8080 program by using macros. Later the Spracklens were contacted by Hayden Books and a book was published.

The Spracklens made significant improvements on the original program and released Sargon II. In 1978 it tied for third at the ninth North American Computer Chess Championship despite being seeded ninth of 12 entries. Sargon finished only behind Belle and Chess 4.7, and defeated AWIT—running on a $5 million Amdahl mainframe—amazing the audience. That year they published a series of articles in BYTE on computer chess programming, stating "we think it would be nice if not everyone had to reinvent the wheel".

Sargon II was ported to a variety of personal computers popular in the early 1980s. The game engine featured multiple levels of lookahead to make it more accessible to beginning chess players. BYTE in 1980 estimated that Sargon II had a 1500 rating at the highest tournament-time difficulty level, and speculated that it was the best chess program on sale, including dedicated devices.

Developers
Alex Ford
Platform
Commodore 64
Alternate Names
  • Championship Chess

Media

Box - 3D

Sargon II - Box - 3D (North America) - 824x1246
North America -  824 x 1246

Box - Back

Sargon II - Box - Back (North America) - 750x712
North America -  750 x 712

Box - Front

Sargon II - Box - Front (North America) - 434x606
North America -  434 x 606
Sargon II - Box - Front (North America) - 750x712
North America -  750 x 712

Clear Logo

Sargon II - Clear Logo (null) - 595x228
595 x 228

Disc

Sargon II - Disc (North America) - 800x800
North America -  800 x 800

Fanart - Box - Front

Sargon II - Fanart - Box - Front (null) - 798x1072
798 x 1072

Screenshot - Game Title

Sargon II - Screenshot - Game Title (World) - 320x200
World -  320 x 200
Sargon II - Screenshot - Game Title (North America) - 320x200
North America -  320 x 200

Screenshot - Gameplay

Sargon II - Screenshot - Gameplay (World) - 320x200
World -  320 x 200