Long before Chris Abbott was busy creating some of the biggest C64 music events in history with stars such as Ben Daglish, Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, David Whittaker and many many other big names – Chris was busy trying to break into the C64 industry by creating game music.
Chess was one such title that Chris had offered to him to compose the music. All of this he did, with slight variations which can be found in HVSC and also here. For reasons currently unknown, the game got cancelled and was never seen or heard of again. What was strange was that there was a 1984 Superior Software Chess game, which seems like it was unrelated.
Well, it seems that it was completely unrelated, and it is something we should have realised a long time ago. This was not a Chess game as such, but was to be based on the West End musical Chess. The alternate name for it was One Night in Bangkok, which was likely the intended name for publishing. And when you look in Chris’ HVSC folder, you’ll see there are music files for Chess, but also Bangkok – all based on the musical.
It was thanks to Christopher Drum on BlueSky that the link was made when posting an Acorn User article which talks of a BBC Micro version of the game. In the article it describes the game as follows:
“The long-promised One Night in Bangkok is expected soon. Superior has postponed the game so as to have something to fill the post-holiday lull. The game is based on the West End musical Chess, and is set on a chess board with a three-dimensional Ultimate-style view. Bangkok obeys the rules of chess at all times, there are dangerous pieces roaming around ready to ‘take’ you if you move to the wrong square, and puzzles to solve. Superior has the rights to two of the songs from the show, so they’ll be used as background music.”
So there we have it – not an update of their 1984 Chess game, but a completely different licence. Richard Hanson of Superior Software confirmed the game was under development, but unfortunately for “various reasons”, it never came to fruition. So its not clear how far the game had got, or why it was cancelled – but reading between the lines, it sounds like there were some difficulties with the project perhaps.
Stairway To Hell had the following details from various magazine clips, as well as a mocked up advert which we’ve added to our scans:
From A & B Computing, September 1988:
News too at last of One Night in Bangkok, which has been talked about for ages – it is apparently some kind of conversion of the stage musical Chess. As far as we can tell, Superior have the rights to that song and to ‘I Know Him So Well’ also. Sounds intriguing.
From Matthew Atkinson, December 2001:
The programmer had the idea of the game having an isometric layout and being based on the game of chess. All the puzzles would rely on chess moves etc. and it ran in mode 4. It was very ambitious which was its undoing. I was handed the work at a late stage, four months before the rights ran out, to try and whip it into shape to recoup some of the money.
Alas the game was not as developed as I’d been led to believe and it got abandoned. Strangely when I got sent the disc, design etc it came unregistered post direct from him and these were the only copies. It was as if the programmer were willing it to disappear…
From Darren Izzard, December 2001:
Superior were also going to release it on the C64, and my friend Chris Abbott was hired to do the music (he also did the music for “By Fair Means Or Foul” on the BBC). I know he completed at least a version of “I Know Him So Well” before the project was shelved – he has placed the SIDPlay files for it in the HVSC archive, so you can actually hear what the game would have sounded like! (Well, on the Commodore, anyway!)
From Gil Jaysmith, February 2002:
It came to Superior on the Spectrum, and the programmer was a Welsh guy called Bill Percy, who had already self-published a game called Mount Challenge through his company Aasvoquelle Software (my spelling may be wrong there!).
He came up with the Chess idea after seeing a feature about the musical on breakfast TV, so he designed and coded a game and sent it to Superior. This landed him the job of the Repton 3 conversion, since this had just come out on the BBC, Superior was thinking of breaking into the Spectrum market, and it was an obvious conversion.
Bill then worked away on the Spectrum R3 for a long while and as I was working independently on the R1 and R2 ports we got in contact. R3 got finished, and I playtested it in 1988 to make sure it was completable, but Superior took their time over marketing Spectrum titles, and eventually only two were released: the boxing game By Fair Means Or Foul, and ReptonMania (my Reptons 1 and 2 bundled on one tape).
Superior decided that they couldn’t get enough ‘push’ behind further titles and gave up on the Spectrum. Oh well. I don’t know who the initial BBC programmer was, who sent Matthew Atkinson the work-in-progress for him to complete, but I’m fairly sure Bill’s version was finished. (It seems unlikely to me that it was Bill himself doing the BBC version, but it might explain the state it was in if he’d had to learn 6502 & BBC stuff from scratch!) In those days ports were often done by eye rather than by any thorough exchange and conversion of data and algorithms, so it could easily be that someone intervened who wasn’t up to it. Game project management wasn’t then all it is now, either!
If you know anything more, then please do get in touch!
Contributions: Chris Abbott, David Hill, Sean O'Neill, Martin/Stadium64, Jazzcat, Triad, David Hill, Christopher Drum, Richard Hanson, Stairway to Hell
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Music_Chess (zip)
Gallery
Update history
- 03/05/26 – Details from Stairway to Hell and advert scan mock added
- 15/04/26 – Details from Richard Hanson confirming game was in development.
- 06/04/26 – Complete revamp, and proper link to the West End musical
- 16/07/23 – 1984 edition of game from Superior Software found and added.
- 01/06/23 – Tidied up the page, and potential links to Cyrus II added.
- 01/10/15 – Added scan of 1984 released edition.
Hi Frank
Someone posted about Chess from Superior Software over at Lemon today. That got my attention so I did some digging around the Chess entry on GTW64
I believe it could be possible that it was Cyrus II Chris Abbott composed the music for?
That one was released by Alligata Software in 1987, but in the beginning of Alligata (1984) they was also refered to Superior Systems.
The company name Superior Systems is mentioned in the first releases from Alligata.
Tim Mahony took over the day-to-day running of the company in 1987 and closed the company nine months later. The name and back catalogue were sold to….. Superior Software.
So it is a strong connection between those 2 companies!
Could ofcourse be a possiblity of another chessgame, why not a Cyrus III ? with music & some other enhancements based on Cyrus II ?
I think you could be onto something Martin! It’s a shame that Chris never saw the Chess game that was being worked on, but the timelines match up for when Alligata was sold to Superior Systems, and a Cyrus III would make sense perhaps. It’s a shame there is no coder listed for Cyrus II, as then the coder could be asked if they worked on a different version.
Going to quickly tidy up the write up too – looks like it was written by a 18yr old me…