Rhythmomachy was created 1000 years ago and translated to English in the 16th century. Before the Rennaissance, its popularity allegedly rivaled that of chess. It's chess-like, or shogi-like maybe, but has more ways of winning, way too many numbers, and is generally a prime example of the historical heights of geekery. Also check out this contemporary take from an AI project at Carnegie-Mellon (PDF), the game's original English text, and this highly simplified version for Windows.