Giant Book Board Games

Four board games from the book on one cartridge, each played against the computer, with a first menu to pick the game and an OTHER GAME choice on each title screen to come back to it.

Checkers: you play white up the board; pieces move diagonally forward, capture by jumping, may jump again, and are crowned on the far row. The computer plays as the book's program does. Reversi, based on a program by Graham Charlton: trap lines of the computer's pieces between two of yours to turn them over; dots show where you can play, and there are CLASSIC and MASTER levels. Awari, one of the mancala games: pick one of your six pits and its seeds are sown one by one into the next pits, clockwise; if the last seed falls in an empty pit, the seeds of the pit opposite go to your home, and when one side is empty the fuller home wins. Four in a Row: drop discs into the seven columns of an upright board, and four in a line, across, up and down or diagonally, wins; a full board is a draw. Awari and Four in a Row have BOOK and MASTER levels, and in Reversi, Awari and Four in a Row you can choose who goes first. Each game has its own new music.

Controls: in Checkers the stick moves the cursor, the left button picks a piece and then its square, and the right button ends a jump or concedes. In Reversi the stick moves the cursor and the button plays. In Awari the stick picks a pit and the button sows it. In Four in a Row the stick chooses a column and the button drops the disc. The keypad is not used.

ColecoVision version credited in the source to Amy Bienvenu for Amy Studio, written in Amy, her own language, 2026: an adaptation of a BASIC program from Tim Hartnell's Giant Book of Computer Games (Ballantine Books, 1984; first published by Interface Publications, 1983). Reversi is based on a program by Graham Charlton. This is a modern homebrew adaptation, not a commercial Coleco release.