If you have been hanging around on Netflix lately - although let's face it, 2020 has been entirely about Netflix - then you may have noticed an intriguing new show called 'The Queens Gambit'. Although many people may be turned off regarding the subject of the show is about chess, it tells the extraordinary tale of an orphaned chess prodigy on her rise to becoming the world's greatest chess player while navigating issues of emotional attachment and drug addiction stemming from her childhood. The popularity of the show has even seen an overwhelming public interest in chess and by the looks of the following artwork, talented illustrators have also taken artistic pursuits into the world of Beth Harmon.Pinot W. Ichwandardi, an Animator at VaynerMedia and a Vineographer at Twitter, has taken his love for Netflix's The Queen's Gambit and remade some artwork from it into the style of an MS-DOS chess game set in the 80s. If you're not quite old enough to remember MS-DOS, which is an acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, the operating system was a personal computer during the 1980s that went through eight versions until development ceased in 2000. Chess, unfortunately, isn't as popular to play now as it was then but gamers used to love games like Battle Chess on the Amiga, Atari, C64, and of course the good ol' MS-DOS. It's incredible to see such a modern twist implemented on such an old system that it'll certainly bring back some nostalgia to those who owned one back in the day.Ichwandardi has even gone one step further and completed his Queen Gambit artwork in not only color and monochrome mode on his old IBM 5153 CGA monitor, but has also recreated some of the show's characters with their very own profile. As we can see from the pictures below, Ichwandardi has added in Mr. Shaibel, D.L. Townes, Benny Watts, and Vasily Borgov as opponents for this retro chess recreation. For an extra treat, we can also get a look at how Ichwandardi created Beth Harmon in CGA mode using IBM PC Storyboard 2.0 software and also the process of how he drew the characters used as opponents. Make sure and check both of those out below, it's brilliantly creative and fantastic to watch whether you're a fan of the show or not.

You can also see the finished product of how The Queen's Gambit would look like completed as a video game, below. Even though we are very much into the next-gen of games, there's something really comforting and uncomplicated about how games used to be made and played. I, for one, would love to play chess in this style and it's great to see one of the oldest games in the world making a comeback thanks to Netflix's The Queens Gambit based on Walter Tevis's 1983 novel of the same name. You can also follow Pinot W. Ichwandardi on Twitter and Instagram to check out what he does next which I'm sure will be very exciting projects.

 

The Queen's Gambit is on Netflix right now and take it from me, it's well worth the watch.