A strange little side quest
Before the next round of Zombo Buster Advance, here is a piece of the bigger picture. The word 'checkmate' is linked to the Persian expression 'shah mat', used when the king was trapped. A second detail makes the picture even better: Spacewar! appeared on MIT's PDP-1 in 1962 and became one of the earliest influential computer games shared among programmers. That history is one reason familiar mechanics can still feel new when they are recombined well.