A version for the Sega Mega Drive was planned but never released. In July 1986, CM became the first commercially available software to win the Personal Computer class of the United States Open Computer Chess Championship in Mobile, Alabama. USCF rated it over 2000 in reality, it is unknown at what strength it plays because the testings were done on slow 1980s computers. The game had a chess engine (without mouse control) written by David Kittinger and the manufacturer rated the game at 2000 Elo. It was published for Amiga, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Macintosh, and DOS.

1986: The Chessmaster series started with The Chessmaster 2000 first published by Software Country, and soon after by The Software Toolworks.