Backgammon (Atari 2600)

To properly cover the board game compilation Mario’s Game Gallery, I had to set aside some time to learn Backgammon, having gone my whole life without understanding it until then. Once I knew the rules, I actually found out I quite enjoyed the game, and seeking to help cement the learning a bit more, I went to find other video games that featured the centuries old amusement.

 

For those who were like me and didn’t understand the board game, the triangles on a Backgammon board represents spaces you can move your checkers across by rolling a pair of dice. Your goal in Backgammon is to first get all your pieces to your designated home area, each player having six spaces they’re trying to get all 15 of their pieces to. Once they’re all in the home area, you then start rolling to move them off the edge of the board, the winner being whoever does so first. What makes this more tactical than just rolling dice and hoping is how player pieces can block or knock away the opponent’s checkers.

 

In Backgammon, you cannot land on a space that has two or more of the opponent’s pieces on it. You can pass up that space when moving your pieces around the board’s edges towards home, but you cannot come to a stop on it even if you intend to move one piece twice with your rolled die rather than splitting them across different checkers. However, if there is only a single piece on the space, you can not only land on it, but send that piece to the central bar. If a player has any pieces in the bar, when they roll the dice, they have to first free their bar pieces before making any other moves or skip their turn if they cannot. However, leaving the bar involves rolling numbers assigned to the home spaces in the opponent’s quarter of the board and the rules about blockages still apply. What this leads to are interesting considerations about which pieces you want to move and when. You can make a large roadblock across a few spaces to try and impede the opponent, gamble on having a piece alone and hope the opponent doesn’t get a number to attack it with, and even clutter the six spaces in your home area before attacking an enemy piece to trap them in the bar long term. Setting things up is at the whims of the dice, but identifying tactics on the fly for delaying the opponent while still making progress is where backgammon’s entertaining side arises.

The manual for Backgammon on Atari 2600 though perhaps overstates how strategic the game can be. Claiming it was once used by militaries to train their soldiers for battle feels like a ridiculous exaggeration of the game’s complexity, Backgammon actually not that complicated once you explain the few core tenants at play. Funnily enough, despite the opening of the manual trying to sell the idea that this is an ages old war game popular across multiple civilizations, it also later goes on to say outright that Backgammon is boring. This is mostly to make the presence of the Doubling Cube more exciting. Essentially just a way of introducing gambling to the affair, players can choose at times to double the stakes of the game, presumably with something outside of the game since there’s no actual betting going on within the video game. If a player agrees to the raised stakes, play continues on, but if you select not to double, you’re essentially just surrendering. Backgammon can definitely reach near unwinnable situations for one side where they might not wish to continue, but it’s not really a strong addition to the game unless you add some real life wagers.

 

Backgammon’s manual at least adequately describes the board game despite getting a bit tangled in terminology like most backgammon tutorials, but it does at least tell you clearly that the game’s vertically oriented game board has the home for red pieces in the bottom right and the home for white pieces in the bottom left. Sadly these aren’t labeled with numbers, the blue and green triangles still not too confusing to navigate up and around to towards their home bases. You can play Backgammon with another human player, but if you choose to compete against the game itself, you start to better see some of the cracks in this simple adaptation. One important thing to know about Backgammon is that if you roll doubles, you actually get to move four times that turn. This is a prime chance for some smart moves, able to get one piece quite far, double up on a spot with ease, or even get a clump of four checkers all ahead a bit. However, the game isn’t quite intelligent enough to understand the best way to play Backgammon. Oftentimes it can be too concerned with getting all its pieces as deep into its home area as possible, something that will pay off down the line when they’re rolling to remove pieces from the board but otherwise detrimental by most metrics. It means less spaces are blocked if the opponent is trying to get on the board from the bar, it means you inevitably have to roll more anyway since you spent some turns not advancing pieces towards home, and it’s quite clear this is an intelligence problem for the game as the computer player will bypass opportunities after rolling doubles for some big movement and just keep cluttering their checkers near the end.

Sadly, the computer player isn’t as aggressive as it could be either, often letting single pieces stand rather than impeding you even when it’s an easy and safe attack. You can almost play around the fact your opponent might not even notice your vulnerable pieces, and sadly while the Atari 2600 has some difficulty switches, they don’t impact how smart the AI is. One switch does have an interesting role, letting you place pieces wherever you like for a game of Backgammon rather than using the typical starting arrangement, but the other is a touch odd. Flipping the right difficulty switch will change how the dice are rolled. Normally, the game handles all rolling, although there’s a bit of an annoying flicker every time the dice come to a stop and even a hitch when doubles are rolled. Flip that switch though, and you actually enter the dice manually, this meant to allow you to roll in real life and use those numbers, but it feels like an added inconvenience. However, there can be a legitimate argument for it at least in this game as players who have dug into the code found the game does favor doubles for all players more than real random die rolls would. This doesn’t give either side an unfair advantage technically, although the game does supposedly pack a quirk where the computer can somehow roll a double set of nines on a six-sided dice that would feel like quite the unbelievable sight to see during an otherwise regular game.

 

Backgammon’s timid and not so smart AI does ruin some of the potential of this Atari game, and the variations don’t help it overcome that issue. There are eight different modes to play Backgammon in, four of them being multiplayer variations of the four unique play styles. Games 1 and 3 are for solo players who want to face the game’s AI, variation one featuring that overhyped Doubling Cube as the feature to set it apart. Variations 5 through 8 move away from the regular Backgammon rules though in favor of Acey Deucey, the manual claiming it was invented by U.S. Navy men and that actually may be close to the truth in its case. Acey Deucey keeps most of the Backgammon rules about movement, blockage, and home areas, but when the game begins, all your pieces are in the bar. You need to get them out of the bar gradually and race across the board, but unlike in regular Backgammon, you can move your board pieces even while some are still inside the bar. Regular Backgammon starts with quite a spread of where your checkers start off, but Acey-Deucey really emphasizes trying to get a quick and early start so you can start blocking spaces to better slow your opponent. Acey-Deucey does have a special rule that ties to its name, any player who rolls a 1 and a 2 at the same time able to move, then getting to choose to make a double roll for any number they like, and then getting another free turn after. There are times where picking a doublet that isn’t two sixes can be important like when trying to get pieces onto specific spots, something the AI again fails to understand that well, and the unlikely case of rolling the titular Acey-Deucey means its incredible boost isn’t too common. It almost feels like it’s there more to help making moving all pieces into play faster and possibly pushing back against an early lead, Acey-Deucey a truly substantial addition compared to the unexciting Doubling Cube’s contribution.

THE VERDICT: Backgammon for Atari 2600 is almost just a serviceable enough adaptation of the board game, but the little issues make it a poor choice if that’s what you’re looking for. If you want to play Backgammon with a person, a real board would be easier to acquire and set up, but the AI for the computer opponent here doesn’t seem smart enough to put up the best fight and skewing the rolls for both players doesn’t help it much either. Having Acey-Deucey rules is a nice addition and the Doubling Cube is harmless enough, but when the game-controlled opponent isn’t the best player, it becomes harder to accept other elements like the limited presentation and frequent screen flickering.

 

And so, I give Backgammon for Atari 2600…

A BAD rating. To my surprise, the AI over in Mario’s Game Gallery was the better Backgammon player than the one featured in a dedicated Backgammon video game, although quite a few years of time likely let it be a bit smarter. Both share the unusual propensity to cram pieces on the final spot in their home area, but Atari Backgammon’s AI player makes other foolish plays that make it a less thrilling opponent to overcome. Naturally it shouldn’t play perfectly, not that there can always be argued to be perfect moves, but it seems to lack the more interesting layers of strategy that make Backgammon more than a race. It’s not great at blocking or attacking, not completely incompetent, but not really making you work too hard to earn wins. You will still get some of the basic enjoyment out of trying to logically weigh the odds or take bold risks in leaving yourself vulnerable for a bit. Increasing the chance of doubles is harmless by comparison, it less realistic than true die rolls but it benefits both sides and makes games a bit faster. It doesn’t pair well with the computer being a poor player though, it squandering its chances to be more competitive even over in Acey-Deucey where a nice 1-2 roll could allow it to do so much more than it tries to get away with. If this game was at least as smart as Mario in Mario’s Game Gallery perhaps that would be enough to deem it passable despite visual shortcomings, although I do hope that the two-time trend of Backgammon games wanting to put all their pieces on their last home space is a coincidence and not something inherent to Backgammon playing AI of a specific time.

 

Backgammon for Atari 2600 did give me more Backgammon play, enough to satisfy my curiosity about a standalone Backgammon game, but there are better adaptations out there for sure and most likely come in bundles with many more board games too. This adaptation of Backgammon is more a time capsule, a part of early video game design where translating most any existing real world game into virtual form was deemed a worthy goal for the burgeoning entertainment medium. Besides the quirks of the manual though, it’s not even a particularly memorable Backgammon adaptation. Not even straightforward enough to be a good teacher of the board game, especially since you can only use the paddle controller for selecting pieces and spaces, Atari Backgammon is the sort of relic that few people would care to spare even a passing thought on and it would be hard to say they’re wrong for ignoring it.