You have quite an imagination. Personally, I thought the BattleChess animations were really fun the first few times, but then they became repetitive (and the engine was kinda weak). But hey, if you ever make it, I'll play a couple games.
remember Battle Chess? What about Sci-Fi Chess?
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I would love the idea I find with ChessMaster you can get these sets. The only problem with it though is the pieces are hard to move. Unfortunateuly, I have seen none of these chess sets for sale.
Nice idea. But personally, rather than having a chess game based upon Star Trek, I would *love* a chess game based upon Warhammer 40K! When you castle your king, you could shout "For the Emperor!!!!" 
Space Marines vs ?. I think if it's Warhammer 40k we need more than two sides. :)
Ham, what are you trying to say? That I should visit Mobeygames? Because the first time you said it, it was like you were saying from real far away, like Honduras or something, and then the next time it was like you were right in my ear saying it again from sunny Carolina.
So to solve the problem of getting tired of animations, one setting would cut them out entirely--and another setting would only show you the NEW animations you hadn't previously unlocked. (The game would record your progress against the different armies, which would play at different strengths based on how cool they were as a species. There'd be positional stuff hidden everywhere like easter eggs, like if two Borg knights were protecting each other a kind of mechanical resonance would build up betwixt them, and if a queen and bishop teamed up along a diagonal to overpower something, they'd charge up a combined beam effect, Etc.) Some aliens have to be defeated before you can play as that set.
To appeal to people from this decade, Halo would be included, Starcraft?, etc. (I think I've looked at the Warhammer you're talking about. Tasty boxcover art. The last Warhammer thing a tried was a turnoff, but it looks good again.)
Also, the Will Smith aliens would have to get in on the act.
well, i think a new star wars chess is due. that one is a little dated. maybe take the entire "Art of Learning" CM11 and give it a full remodeling. James Earl Jones isn't doing much now and could do some voice-overs. which would you rather learn chess from... Josh Waitzkin.... or Lord Vader. Unfortunately, Lucas is an a-hole with licensing and product control. so good luck with Star Trek, hehe.
That one would arrange itself, too! Or would it?
I just spent way too much time figuring out a Legacy of Kain set (from the vampire video game series). It was worse than doing the seating arrangements at my last wedding.
Here's one idea for Lord of the Rings:
Kings: Aragorn vs. Saruman (Standing in front of a tiny Gondor and ...Orthanc?, so you know what you're fighting for.
Queens: Gandalf (on Shadowfax) vs. Balrog
Rooks: Lady Galadriel and Rivendell's Elrond vs. Nazgul [2] (on winged fell beasts)--the idea being that both elves are ringbearers and so they and their realms are able to withstand the nazgul, making them the ONLY truly fortified havens in the land for castling. Both elves shown standing in front of tiny representations of their realms.
Bishops: The King of the Dead vs. Oliphant ; Treant vs. Shelob spider
Knights: Rohirrum [2] (horse riders of Rohan) vs. [2] Cool armored trolls
Pawns: The Fellowship Members!!!!! (minus Aragorn and Gandalf, but with gollum added in!)--so that any pawn promotion assumes they succeeded and got the ring past the enemy to Mt. Doom). The extra queen for them might be a great eagle? VS. Orcs on the other side, duh. Some bigger Uruk-hai on Saruman's kingside? The Mouth of Sauron as the queen pawn. The Extra queen for them might as well be a dragon or even Sauron in fighting armor, right?
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The bishops and rooks could easily be switched for each other in that set, come to think of it.
And the thing that's bothering me is Rohan should be stronger than a normal knight. I didn't have the balls to make the Rohirrum the queen for the good guys, but should have, making Gandalf a rook opposite the Balrog, and making The Dead as the other hero rook so you could castle your king (and Gondor) into the safety of the dead army or into the safekeeping of the wizard. Also, if you're looking for the permanent heroic queen of middle earth, it would have to be the elven Galadriel--she was there since the Noldor elves first made the journey of revenge across the sea. So it was really her grudge match against Sauron and the Nazgul witch king. How to represent that in a chess set in a way that does it justice, I don't know.
Battle Chess was computer software 15 years ago that took the boring static chess pieces and turned them into animated characters, like an ogre who'd take a piece by clubbing it on the head, a knight who would swordfight with his prey, a wizard, etc.
Does anybody know if anything like that has been put on the market recently?
My idea:
I think it would be really fun (but only for a select few, unfortunately) if the science fiction franchises like Star Trek, Babylon 5, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Colony Wars, Stargate, (and several authors with their own universes) would all release their trademarked spaceships to participate in some kind of INTERGALACTIC animated chess program.
Example army:
--The Borg--
Pawns: ships from various other Trek species that have been taken over and "adapted to service the Borg"--now they all have glowing green tech visible on their outer hulls.
Knights: the Cube ship is the basic military unit of the Borg; it's what they send to greet you, so it felt right to have Cubes mixing it up as knights, but I thought the cubeship should also be the most powerful ship on the board because they were so intimidating on the show, so I made the Queen a larger version of the Cube, with extra flashy weoponry and a permanent green energy buildup emanating from within so you could always tell it apart instantly.
Bishops: Sphere ships, such as the one that attacked earth in one of the major motion pictures.
Rooks: Galactic Hubs. Borg infrastructure, as shown in the series finale of Voyager. They're big, cool looking trees of metal in space that serve as docks and staging grounds. So they would be larger than just one square on the board. How? The top, center part of them would occupy the piece's square, but the rest of their arms and branches would be there BELOW THE PLANE OF THE CHESSBOARD, as if beneath the battle. An awesome cutscene would play as the King ship castled and passed through the hub and its hyperspace railway connections.
Queen: Huge Cubeship. Mentioned earlier. Upon destruction, the queen jetisons a tiny sphere ship which retreats either to a surviving Hub or disappears into deep space.
"King": The Borg Queen. A character from the show, seated on her throne on a dais which is actually a skiff type craft with a see-through window on top. After being checked, this ship shows visible damage--which then REGENERATES over the next several moves (as the Borg were famous for doing), or if perpetually checked the kingship takes the hint and transforms into a more heavily armored and imposing looking vessel.
PAWN PROMOTION: the Borg-assimilated pawn vessel sheds the skin of its original species' manufacture to reveal a completed Sphere ship at its core. Then it calls through subspace to summon a new huge cubeship queen, which docks the tiny sphere ship into itself upon arrival.
UPON THE FIRST CAPTURE THE BORG MAKE: they don't destroy the enemy ship--instead they ASSIMILATE it. The enemy's own ship turns around, starts glowing green, and is now used against them by the Borg. The Borg ship who made the capture leaves the battle to take their new prisoners before the Borg Queen, so she can meet her opponents face to face--and personally assimilate them in a movie sequence shown from the frightened point of view of the person being turned into a cyborg.
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What do you think? Huh? Huh? Wouldn't that be a great way to add some spice to computer chess?
I've got chess sets like that all ready to go for the Cylons & Galactica, Vorlons & Shadows, SG-1, Dominion & StarFleet Alliance (from the Deep Space Nine big war's final season).