Retro Arcade: Checkers and Othello?

On the game box I got recently, among the hundreds of old NES games, there were a few games that were so basic, I don't understand why they were released at all.  Let's start with Checkers.  You probably have a checkers set in your closet somewhere, so why would you spend money on a Nintendo cartridge for that?

That being said, the game worked as expected and I was able to beat it on the first game.  I didn't see any options.

Next up is Othello, which also might be in your closet.  It's also very common in game collections.  Again, the game worked as expected and I beat in on my first try.

In both cases, the controls were a bit awkward.  To select the piece I want, I have to go left left left up up SELECT, then to move it: up right DROP.  And so on.  ON a real game board, you just pick things up and move them.  You know, like humans do.

I am sure I programmed my own versions of these games as starter projects when I was learning code ages ago.  I just find it odd that there were game cartridges for these no-brainers.

The manual for this version of Othello is here.

As an interesting historical notes, here is the manual for the Atari 2600 version of Checkers (1980),
which is noted as one of the first four games ever released by Activision, which went on to be one of the biggest PC game companies.  Looking at the manual, those other three first titles were Dragster, Boxing, and Fishing Derby.

It's technically playable here, but with no clue what the keys to use.

 

The game box also has a few Chess variants, Chinese Checkers, what looks like Go, and one of the very complex Asian Chess games with 10 or 15 different pieces.  So I guess the old cartridges had the basic games pretty well covered, before inventing new styles of gaming entirely.