Rival Chess - 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:

   Rival, (Rival Chess, NewRival) is a chess engine by Chris Moreton and Russell Newman, written in C++, starting in 1992 as MS-DOS program with an own GUI, before being rewritten for Windows as WinBoard compatible engine (NewRival) a couple of years later.

Rival Chess (DOS)

The UCI protocol was implemented in 2006 as Rival UCI 1.18 for Windows, while the current Rival engine was ported to Java as used in the Android application. DOS and Windows versions are available as source code. Further, Rival is able to play various chess variants like Kinglet, Losing Chess, and Shatranj.
   The DOS version of the program used giant graphical icons to control, which were used to set graphics, game parameters, takeback moves and other activities. However, the graphics themselves already seemed outdated and unclear in the mid-nineties. Also the game strength of the program was not high and even on the most powerful machines it did not exceed 2100 ELO points. The Windows version of Rival has participated several times in computer tournaments in its weight category, but without significant success. At that time, his competitors were significantly stronger both in strategy and tactics. Rival's advantage was only in the ability to play more different games, not just regular chess.
   On the other hand, Rival was only a shareware project and its last DOS version 1.5f was completely released for free distribution. Because of this, it spread quickly on many computers before Windows. So if you want to measure your chess skills with this old software, please go for it. Good luck.

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

Find digital download of this game on GOG or Steam.

This ver­sion of Rival Chess 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 Rival Chess. 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 Rival Chess are summarized in the following table: