Go

Overview

Go (wéiqí in Chinese, igo in Japanese) is a board game that dates back to ancient China. In the modern era, it remains a popular game in its home region of east Asia. Players take turns placing stones on a square board divided into a grid; stones are not placed within the squares in the grid, but on the intersections of the lines. The goal is to capture the most territory on the board by encircling areas of the board with stones. Opposing stones within encircled territory are captured and removed from the board.

Go is one of the most popular strategy board games, along with Chess (as well as variants like Shogi), which originated in neighboring India. The more modern strategy board game of Reversi, also known as Othello, is based on Go and is sometimes even considered a variant of it.

Video Games

Like chess and many other popular board games, Go has been adapted into numerous video games over the years.

Several key figures in the history of the video game industry have been Go players. Atari's founder Nolan Bushnell is an avid player, and has called Go his favorite game of all time. The name Atari comes from a strategic maneuver used in Go.

The late Hiroshi Yamauchi, former president of Nintendo responsible for transforming the playing card manufacturer into a video game giant, was also an avid Go player and was ranked officially as a sixth dan, marking him highly skilled in the game. One of Nintendo's first games was Computer Othello, based on the Go variant Othello/Reversi.

Games like Go and Chess were precursors to wargaming, which in turn was a precursor to the strategy and RPG genres in video games.