Othello is a 1988 video game published by Acclaim Entertainment

Acclaim Entertainment

Acclaim Entertainment was an American video game developer and publisher. It developed, published, marketed and distributed interactive entertainment software for a variety of hardware platforms, including Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, and Game Gear, Nintendo's NES, SNES, Nintendo...

, made for the Nintendo Entertainment System

Nintendo Entertainment System

The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...

. An earlier version of the game was released on the Atari 2600

Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...

 in 1980. Othello is based on the board game Reversi

Reversi

Reversi is a board game involving abstract strategy and played by two players on a board with 8 rows and 8 columns and a set of distinct pieces for each side. Pieces typically are disks with a light and a dark face, each face belonging to one player...

, which was marketed as Othello. It is similar to both chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 and checkers.

Gameplay

The game is played with two-sided (black and white) chips, also called discs, on a board. The player can choose between black or white chips. Games are either player versus computer or player versus player. The goal is to end the game with as many chips showing your color as possible. To do this, a player must sandwich their opponent's chip(s) between a piece of their own color already on the board, and the piece being played. The game has four skill levels when playing the computer, as well as a hidden fifth level if you beat the computer on level four.

There is supposedly a slot machine game that is revealed when pressing Select + A at the main menu screen (the word slot will appear atop the screen and the game is said to start after you complete a two player game), however some users have reported that nothing happens after the word "slot" shows up.