By Brad Cook
It originated in Germany, not China, but Chinese Checkers will easily find a home on your iPod, where you’ll get to relive those halcyon days of childhood, when playing a board game might be the most strenuous thing you’d do all weekend. If you can’t round up some live players for a pass-and-play session, simply choose computer opponents and get a game started.
Between two and six, but not five, players can participate. (Five can’t play because someone’s goal will be an empty area, which gives them an unfair advantage.) As in the classic board game, the objective is to move your marbles from their starting area to the opposite side of the board. Moves may only be one space at a time, unless you jump another marble (yours or an opponent’s), in which case you can keep going until there are no more jumps. The first player to move all of their marbles into the goal is the winner.
You can undo a move after making it, and three times per game, you can ask for a hint. Between games, check out the Statistics screen to view your total games, wins and losses, fastest game, and biggest jump for two-, three-, four-, and six-player matches.
And for a change of pace, do something you never could in the old days: choose among boards made of wood, glass, stone, metal, or rock, with a wide variety of images, from an ocean to outer space, available as your background.
Tips and Tricks
- Get as many marbles out of your starting zone as quickly as possible during the game’s opening moves. They help create long jump opportunities. And make sure you move out the marbles toward the tip of the star point, or they could wind up trapped by an opponent. (Yes, that opponent will need your starting zone vacated of your marbles to have a shot at winning, but if they’re stubborn about it, you won’t be able to win either.)
- The Novice and Medium difficulty levels display all possible moves when you select a marble, but if you’d rather not see them, choose Expert difficulty.
- You can choose not to take all the jumps in a sequence, if you’d prefer not to because doing so would give an opponent an advantage.
- As you move your marbles into their destination zone, place them as far back as possible, so they don’t block newcomers.
- You can find more advice at Wikibooks and LearnPlayWin.
- If you have a fourth generation iPod nano, you can play the game in landscape mode by turning the device on its side. Note that the clickwheel functions change too, so, for example, Fast Forward becomes Menu.
iPod Games FAQ
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- Site: Chinese Checkers
- Publisher: Apple Inc.
- Developer: Apple Inc.
- Genre: Cards, Casino, & Board
More iPod Games
System Requirements
- Mac OS X version 10.3.9 or Windows 2000
- iPod nano (3rd and 4th generation only), iPod classic, or iPod (5th generation only). Not playable on your computer, other iPod models, iPod touch or iPhone. Please check which iPod model you have.
- iTunes 7.5 or higher required to download (games cannot be played in iTunes)