NOW: A Computer Chess Program - DOS

Game is con­trol­led by the same keys that are used to playing un­der MS DOS. For full­screen press 'Right Alt' + 'En­ter'.

If the game e­mu­la­ti­on spe­ed is low, you can try to in­cre­a­se it by re­lo­a­ding this pa­ge with­out a­ds or cho­o­se a­no­ther e­mu­la­tor from this table.

Unfortunately, this game is cur­rent­ly available only in this ver­si­on. Be patient :-)

File size:

Game size:

   NOW is old computer chess program written by Mark Lefler for the IBM-PC line of computers. NOW was working on any 8088, 80286 or 80386 machine with CGA, EGA or VGA displays. For text only displays, the program used a simple text only representation of the board instead of the fancy graphics.

Now (DOS)

   NOW was not a profit making program. Funds received on this shareware program were used to pay duplication costs, salaries of a business manager and to buy new development hardware. Contributions helped with development a stronger, more feature-filled program.
   NOW did rather well in the 1991 Microcomputer Chess Championship. It finished with the best score for an amateur program running on a PC with only M-CHESS beating it on a PC. Other programs which beat NOW ran on very fast RISC-based processors, much faster than NOW's 40 MHz 80386 machine. Now tied with first place among all chess programs at the Aegon 1996 Tournament, receiving 4.5 out of 6 points. This tied the program with other world class programs such as Fritz, and it beat Grandmaster Larry Christiansen. Now was written in Pascal, running on PCs with MS-DOS operating system. In 2007, Mark started a rewrite using C.
   NOW was not meant to compete with other powerful commercial programs, such as M-CHESS, Zarkov or Chessmaster 2100. It is simply a shareware option.

More details about this game can be found on ChessProgramming.org.

Find digital download of this game on GOG or Steam.

This ver­sion of NOW: A Computer Chess Program was de­sig­ned for per­so­nal com­pu­ters with o­pe­ra­ting sys­tem MS-DOS (Mi­cro­soft Disk O­pe­ra­ting Sys­tem), which was o­pe­ra­ting sys­tem de­ve­lo­ped by Mi­cro­soft in 1981. It was the most wi­de­ly-used o­pe­ra­ting sys­tem in the first half of the 1990s. MS-DOS was sup­plied with most of the IBM com­pu­ters that pur­cha­sed a li­cen­se from Mi­cro­soft. Af­ter 1995, it was pu­s­hed out by a gra­phi­cal­ly mo­re ad­van­ced sys­tem - Win­dows and its de­ve­lop­ment was ce­a­sed in 2000. At the ti­me of its grea­test fa­me, se­ve­ral thou­sand ga­mes de­sig­ned spe­ci­fi­cal­ly for com­pu­ters with this sys­tem we­re cre­a­ted. To­day, its de­ve­lop­ment is no lon­ger con­ti­nue and for e­mu­la­tion the free DOSBox e­mu­la­tor is most of­ten used. Mo­re in­for­ma­ti­on about MS-DOS operating system can be found here.

5 different online emulators are available for NOW: A Computer Chess Program. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in support of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic features of each emulator available for this game NOW: A Computer Chess Program are summarized in the following table: