Backgammon (1983, Sinclair Research) is an excellent implementation of the ancient board game. There are thirteen distinct titles currently in the WoS archive simply called "Backgammon" but you need look no further than this version, which understandably also gets the highest voted score of all of them in the archive.
Everything is right about this game, the excellent and simplistic user interface, the perfect graphics, the animated rolling dice and the simulated "doubling cube". The CPU has four skill levels providing some varying levels of challenge to the casual player. According to the instructions, the "AI" algorithm is implemented in machine code and indeed it does seem instantaneously fast.
Being a Sinclair title, the standard ROM font is naturally used, which I find suits board games very well (perhaps better than it suits some arcade games) and of course there's the obligatory green BORDER, a hallmark of absorbing tabletop board games. I'm glad they got that right!
So is a modern Windows/MacOS/Linux version of Backgammon needed when you have this version? Well perhaps so for world-class masters of the game, but for the rest of us this 8-bit offering is ideal. Also it's nice to have the advantage of using between-game snapshots to save out a long protracted match-play battle with the speccy. If you like backgammon, then this game can steal a few hours before you even notice how much time has passed. Highly absorbing and flawlessly implemented. Even more impressive then that it's a 16K release.
