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Why did I not have this when I was a kid?! I've never even heard of this game. 3-D Battleship? Yes, please!

Round about 1982 I built a 3-D chess board. The original intent was to have moveable platforms on the corners, like the one in Star Trek. The construction technique for such intricacies, however, proved beyond the limit of my skills and the materials available to me, which consisted of plexiglass, dowel rods, and whatever fasteners I could scare up out of dad's tool box. In the end, I decided to make it wider than a standard chess board by two squares, with three play levels. I also invented new pieces with unique movement patterns, all based on D&D miniature figures. Demogorgon and Orcus were the kings; I can't recall the rest. I do remember that it was excessively complicated to play and far beyond the average attention span of 14 year-old children, myself included.

But it was my first attempt at game design, so it was glorious from that perspective. At the time I harbored dreams of becoming a professional game designer, but two things changed that dream. First, I learned how little money was actually in the business. That's changed these days, as it's now a multi-billion dollar industry, but it was on the outer fringe in the 1980s. And secondly, I discovered that traveling to foreign countries and killing people was a lot more fun.