Game 2 - Ishar 2 (fighting orcs in the forest and searching for lost amulet)

Game 2 - Ishar 2

Fighting orcs in the forest and searching for lost amulet

Year: 1993

Developer: Silmarils

Publisher: Silmarils

Platforms: Amiga AGA, also available for OCS/ECS

Game session: 2

Game time so far: 5h

Difficulty in this session: easy to moderate

Entertaintment level: very high

I explored the left half of the Irvan's Island map, found the port, but I can't leave the island yet. For that, you need to complete a task for the local village chief. This is my first quest in this game, to find a lost amulet. I also collect mushrooms that I occasionally find in this location. Further exploring the island towards the right half of a map I found a large forest. There are not so friendly orcs in this forest. The basic ones don't look dangerous, I've killed a few of them. Unfortunately, after a few minutes of reducing local population of enemies I was met by their boss. That one had two weapons and was much worse. He beat the whole bunch out of me.

So next solution to this problem is a common CRPG loop - fight, load, repeat. Soon I realised that this fight is impossible now for my adventurers. Must get some experience in other locations of Irvan’s Island. 

 

Next time I skipped this fight and I went to explore the remaining parts of the Irvan´s Island map. In the upper portion of the island are some wasps and there I found a Dandelion.

 

Also met this strange mage or whatever he is...offering something for 10.000 gold.

Mages always lust for money

 I returned to town for some sleep (restore my phy and psy characteristics), then I walked to the stone circle, where bandits and their boss were. Killed them all. The Bandit boss was rather easy to kill. From the dying woman there I was given a pendant.

 

After returning to the village, shopping for some food and then restoring my characters health, phy and psy statistics by sleeping in the inn I was ready for the orc boss in the forest. With the help of the Zeloran and his mass physical protection spell and after several load loops I finally killed the orc boss - without him killing anyone from my party. This fight was very hard for me and I was very frustrated by it. The loot was 10 000 gold and a necklane. Than I returned to the village, walked to the mansion of village chief and handed him the necklane. He was happy and he said that the boat is ready. Finally I can leave this island. 

 

Thanks for the money

 

But not so fast. There is a stone golem on the west coast and a mage in the forest.

After spending money for sleeping at inn to replenish party psychical powers, buying food to replenish the physical ability of my heroes (when this reach 0 you cannot fight) and shopping at general store for one leather armor my noney reserve decreased by large amount. From 10K gold to 4K. The economy in this game is rather well balanced, I see 😀.

The stone golem on the west coast is another problem. I cannot kill him. He is fully resistant to my physical damage and my mage spells do not do damage either I think. So because I do not have 10 000 gold for a mage on the east I will try the boat from this island. And maybe I will later return here stronger and with lots of money.

 

The way out of Irvan's Island

 

I boarded the ship, sailing to the next island. Its name is Zach's Island and after few moments there, it looks like a big town covers it all. 

 

So this is the end of this Ishar 2 game session. I look forward to a new grand adventure in the city. 

Be happy and play retro.

 

The next chapter will be about good meals, such a culinary guide to the world of Ishar 2

(game time so far: 5 hours)

The Amiga 600 - about the hardware from the era thirty years ago

 About the hardware from the era thirty years ago

 Amiga 600

Release date: March, 1992 ( 31 years ago)

Introductory price: £399 or $499

Units sold: 193,000 in Germany plus 200,000 worldwide.

Discontinued: 1993

 

Amiga 600

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Amiga 600 was the last model with the Motorola 68000 procesor @7.16 MHz (NTSC)/ 7.09 MHz (PAL) and the 1990 Enhanced Chip Set. It had 1 MB of CHIP RAM 80 ns. 

It was the redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus (that model was from 1991). It added PCMCIA card slot and the option for internal HDD. Amiga 600 was lacking a numeric block, due to size limits. It was almost the size of the IMB PC keyboard. Weight 2.72 kg. It shipped with AmigaOS 2.0.

An A600HD model was sold with an internal 2.5" ATA hard disk drive of either 20 or 40 MB.

 

Due to the inclusion of Kickstart 2.05, many software titles made for A1000 or A500 do not work on the A600. A program - Relokick - was released which loaded a Kickstart 1.3 ROM image into memory and booted the machine into Kickstart 1.3. This allowed most incompatible software to run. Because Relokick itself occupies 512 KB of memory, some titles would not work unless the A600 was fitted with a 1 MB trapdoor memory expansion.

 

The ECS can adress up to 2 MB of CHIP RAM and adds higher resolution modes.

The Super Agnus display chip can drive screen modes varying from 320×200 pixels to 1280×512 pixels. As with the original Amiga chipset, up to 32 colors can be displayed from a 12-bit (4096 color) palette at lower display resolutions. An extra half-brite mode offers 64 simultaneous colors by allowing each of the 32 colors in the palette to be dimmed to half brightness. Additionally, a 4096-color HAM mode can be used at lower resolutions. At higher resolutions, such as 800×600i, only 4 simultaneous colors can be displayed.

Sound was unchanged from the original Amiga design, namely 4 DMA driven 8-bit channels, with two channels for the left speaker and two for the right.

The A600 was the first Amiga model with built-in color composite video (RCA), which allowed the A600 to be used with a standard CRT television without the need for a Modulator adaptor.