Emergo derives from the Latin 'Luctor et Emergo', the motto of he Dutch province of
Zeeland, and meaning 'I wrestle and emerge'. You'll find this name is very appropriate.
Emergo originates in the game Lasca, invented by the legendary world champion Chess
Emanuel Lasker. Lasker made a classic mistake, showing once more that being a good player
and being a good inventor are two different things. The mistake was this: he left a great
idea where he found it, which was: in the game of Draughts. Thus he hooked it up to three
interrelated principles of this game: an initial position, a forward orientation and
promotion. None of these are needed to implement the essence of his idea, and applying
them makes Lasca an overcomplicated game. Lasca is played on a square board, and so was
the first implementation of Emergo, which is played on the dark squares of a 9x9 checkered
board with dark corners. The game was a joint effort by Ed van Zon, who got me interested
in Lasca's way of capture in the first place, and me. When I made the usual 'hexagonal
translation', using exactly the same rules, I found the game incomparably
more dramatic, and so did everybody at the games club 'Fanatic' at Twente University
in Enschede, the Netherlands. Few cared for the square version after its introduction.
Emergo became a hexagonal game overnight.
EMERGO © Christiaan Freeling.
JAVA Applet by Ed van Zon.
You can play Emergo in
The ARENA:
www.cybercomm.nl/~freeling/ARENA/Arena.html