A fun thing about this game was that every possible kill combination had a different animation. If you don't have any other plans for the next 9 minutes of your life, you can watch them all here:
The battle animations made chess a lot more interesting - one of the favorites: the knight v. knight homage to Monty Python, taking one limb off at a time. Merely a flesh wound!
I played this game as a kid, and I loved the sounds and especially the visuals. It taught me chess, and it enforced me to explore how to beat the computer with different moves (because I wanted to see all the moves, or a specific move). So it was fun to explore.