Archon was a great videogame from the 1980s that perfectly balanced the strategy of chess with the skill and simplicity of arcade games.
On a 9 x 9 board, light and dark forces faced off in one of the best games Electronic Arts has ever published—in a different era, when EA cared a bit more about making good products than just increasing revenue.
Additionally, there was a piece in Archon that caught my attention: the Shapeshifter, a piece that belonged to the Dark side and behaved differently from the rest. The Shapeshifter would take on the form and behavior of its enemy. In Archon, when two pieces confronted each other, a battle arena would open where both fought using different abilities such as speed and projectile type. But the genius of the Shapeshifter was that it transformed into its opponent. So if it fought against a powerful piece, it became a powerful piece. If it fought a basic piece, it became basic. A kind of Zelig -like character. It could be used to attack powerful Light unicorns, but at the same time, the Light player could attack it with a pawn and defeat it in hand-to-hand combat.
Archon is a masterpiece of game design, and the Shapeshifter is one of its most important components. The brilliance of making its greatest strength also its greatest weakness is truly admirable.
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