XL-25 or Cross Knight

NEW Just received my XL 25 in the post, with instructions. Information on this page has been brought up to date inthe light of this

Many thanks to Steve Borowsky for sending me details and pictures of this (somewhat obscure) game. If anyone knows any more about it, or about Vulcan Electronics in general (I think they made chess computers) please Contact Me!!

XL-25 was made by Vulcan Electronics Ltd, seemingly around the late 1970's or early 1980's. The exact date is unknown, although it was certainly long before Tiger released their first Lights Out. (no date appears anywhere on the packaging)

Click here for a bigger picture of XL-25, and also a picture of the label on the back.

Description

XL-25 has a grid of 5x5 buttons with internal LEDs. Using these buttons it plays two versions of Lights Out. When it is first switched on, it goes through a brief display of flashing LEDs, before waiting in the state shown in the picture above. The game is then in play and any of the buttons can be pressed. The aim of the game is turn all the lights on.

Xl 25 can be played in two modes. The first is just like standard Lights Out. When a button is pressed, the light under the button itself and its immediate vertical and horizontal neighbours are toggled.

The second mode is far more interesting. Called "Chess Knight", in this mode the effect pattern is based on the Knights move in chess. When a button is pressed the light under that button and those at every place that a Knight could move to are toggled. For example, if the centre button is pressed the following lights are toggled

I haven't worked out a genberal method of solving this yet, but (as it says in the XL 25 manual) "And you thought chess was difficult!" If you want to have a play you can try my Javascript version.

The five buttons underneath the 5x5 grid are as follows

Sound
This button toggles the sound on and off

Random
This button causes a "random" display of lights to be chosen, and can be pressed at any time. It is unknown just how random this really is (or whether all the selections are solvable)

Clear
This button returns the game to the state shown in the picture above

Cross Knight Score
Pressing this button changes between the "Cross" mode and the "knight" mode. Once a mode has been selected pressing this button again causes the display to be utilized as a dot-matrix numerical display showing the number of buttons pressed up to that point. This is a three digit number and is displayed as three seperate numbers flashed up one at a time.

Store/Recall
This button allows the state of the game to be memorized, while saving power by turning off the LEDs. Note that there is an on/off switch on the back, and this must be kept on for this feature to work.