When I was a wee child, I cut my gaming teeth on this sucker:

There were a variety of fantastic games available on this thing, but today I’m going to talk about one that has been ported to Steam so you can play it even today.  I’m talking about ARCHON.

I tell a lot of people about this game because it’s great, and the biggest and most common mistake people make when dismissing it is assuming that it’s chess.  I can assure you that beyond the superficial similarities they’re really nothing alike.  Pieces move differently, the goals are different, there’s magic spells involved, oh, and your pieces have to fight each other to the death in remarkably tense and fast-paced action battles.

The rules are simple: Either kill or capture all the other pieces or capture five power points on the board.  It’s a fantasy based game so if you want phoenixes fighting dragons and unicorns fighting golems then don’t worry, you’ll get a lot of it.  Oh also you can summon air elementals and stuff.

Remember when I said you can get it on Steam?  Yeah.  Get it here, play either a more modernized version or the classic mode, and enjoy one of the more overlooked games of the 80s.