The RPi chess project is a graphical, bare-metal game for Raspberry Pi: it boots without an operating system, displays the board over HDMI, and takes moves through six GPIO-connected buttons. Its creators also wrote a limited assembler in C for the project. They described it as a two-player game, not a chess engine with an AI opponent.
What the Raspberry Pi assembly chess project is
Xu Ji, Bora Mollamustafaoglu, and Gun Pinyo created the game as a first-year C project at Imperial College London. A contemporary Make: article published July 3, 2013 described its colourful graphical board and its use of the Pi GPU. The project repository includes the report and presentation, assembler materials, and game source: the Chess repository.
“Bare metal” means the game runs without an operating system managing it as a normal desktop application. It is therefore a small hardware-and-software project with a specific boot process and physical controls, rather than a chess program to install and launch in a desktop environment.
How the game handles display and input
The repository documents HDMI-connected display output and six momentary push buttons wired to GPIO. Each button has a stated control:
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| GPIO pin | Action |
|---|---|
| GPIO18 | Left |
| GPIO4 | Down |
| GPIO23 | Up |
| GPIO17 | Right |
| GPIO22 | Select |
| GPIO27 | Reset/restart |
The README’s additional parts list calls for a breadboard, six 10 kΩ resistors, six 1 kΩ resistors, and male-female and male-male jumper wires. It also requires a Raspberry Pi, an SD card, and an HDMI-connected screen. These are the project’s documented requirements, not a validated shopping list for a currently supported board.
Why the project includes its own assembler
The team wrote a limited assembler in C as part of the assignment. In Make:’s 2013 account, the assembler was based on ARM7 assembly, supported a restricted set of instructions, and used labels for variable names. Make: reported the game at about 15,000 lines; that is the publication’s contemporary estimate, not a fresh count of the repository.
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The project README says assembler binaries were provided for x86 and ARM, while the assembler source was withheld at the time. Those statements describe the repository as documented; they do not establish that its tools or build instructions work unchanged in present-day environments.
Is it a two-player game or does it have an AI?
The authors described the game as intended for two players and said they had not written an AI. That distinction matters: the available descriptions do not support treating it as a computer opponent or evaluating its chess strength as an engine. The Raspberry Pi forum post uses the phrase “chess in asm!” and describes a graphical game running in assembly without an OS. The forum attributes the post to handle xj112358; the sources do not establish that poster’s personal name or formal role.
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How to build and boot the project
The repository’s documented process is to build an image, then put it on the SD card’s boot partition. Follow the README for the exact wiring and setup alongside these high-level steps:
- Open a shell in the repository’s
programsdirectory. - Run
make chess. The README says this generateskernel.img. - Replace the image in the SD card’s boot partition with the generated
kernel.img. - Connect a screen by HDMI and wire the six momentary buttons to the listed GPIO pins, using the components specified in the README.
- Boot the Raspberry Pi from that card and use the buttons for navigation, selection, and reset.
The repository documents this historical boot-image workflow, but does not name currently supported Raspberry Pi models or verify current compatibility. The instructions should not be treated as a guarantee that a present-day board, firmware setup, or build environment will work without modification.
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What is established—and what is not
- Established: This was a graphical bare-metal Raspberry Pi chess project, with HDMI display output and physical GPIO-button input.
- Established: The creators wrote a restricted custom assembler in C for the assignment, and described the game as two-player without AI at the time.
- Not established: Compatibility with any particular currently sold Raspberry Pi model, a tested modern build procedure, or a current measurement of source-code size.
- Not established: A computer-playing mode or an engine strength rating.
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