Sargon

Sargon is a video game in the strategy genre and published by Hayden Software Co., Inc. originally released in 1979. It is currently playable on Apple II.

The first great microcomputer chess dynasty began at the 1978 West Coast Computer Faire, where this chess game developed by a husband-and-wife team (on a Z80-based platform, the Wavemate Jupiter III) took first prize. Interest in their product led them to distribute photocopies of their source code for other Z80-derived home computers; the March 1980 issue of Recreational Computing converted it to run on 8080-based computers. After that, the magnetic media situation stabilized throughout the industry, and the program began to be available for purchase by people who had no intention of typing it.

The game itself can be played as a list of piece moves to board locations or, more humanly, as a graphical representation of a game board with pieces on it. The artificial intelligence can be easily outclassed by chess masters, but it is enough to perplex amateur players on a frequent basis.

This first installment of the Sargon series was available for the early champions of the microcomputer scene, the Apple II and TRS-80, but by the time other machines began to reach homes, updated versions (Sargon II and III) had replaced this version, which was also sold for a wide variety of kit machines.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.