Ishar: Legend of the Fortress IBM PC MS-DOS 1992 Silmarils

Ishar: Legend of the Fortress

Silmarils released Ishar: Legend of the Fortress for IBM PC MS-DOS in April of 1992. Ishar: Legend of the Fortress is the first Ishar game and the prequel to Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom of 1993.

Ishar: Legend of the Fortress is the sequel to Crystals of Arborea of 1990. In Ishar Silmarils removed the strategy map and turn-based combat mode that Crystals of Arborea featured.

Ishar: Legend of the Fortress is flip-screen cRPG in the vein of Dungeon Master of 1987. The main difference between Ishar and Dungeon Master and its clones is that Ishar focuses on wilderness combat and exploration whereas Dungeon Master and its clones are focused on dungeon-crawling.

Ishar: Legend of the Fortress was conceived by Michel Pernot and Pascal Einsweiler; was programmed by Michel Pernot, André Rocques and Louis-Marie Rocques; was drawn by Jean-Christophe Charter and Pascal Einsweiler; and was composed by Fabrice Hautecloque.

The object of Ishar is to prevent Krogh the Sorcerer from enslaving Kendoria. Assuming the role of Aramir the player controls a six-man adventuring party in real-time from a first-person perspective.

Amusingly, it costs 1,000 GP to save the game.

Ishar displays in 256-color VGA 320x200. Ishar employs 100,000 drawspaces 256x126px in size (yes, the drawspace size is smaller than Crystals of Arborea's 320x152. [1]

Ishar requires an i80386 CPU and 4 megs of RAM. Ishar employs PCM digitized sounds via AdLib or Sound Blaster.

Ishar: Legend of the Fortress was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB diskette or 4x 5.25" 360kB floppy disks. The hard disk drive install size is 1.5 megs (105 files).

Ishar: Legend of the Fortress Manual: 31 pages.

[1]

Flip-screen cRPG active drawspace size comparison (in horizontal and vertical pixels):

• Dungeon Master Atari ST 1987: 16-color 224x136 drawspace
• Pool of Radiance IBM PC 1988: 16-color EGA 88x88 drawspace
• Bloodwych Amiga 1989: 16-color 2x 128x76 drawspaces
• Captive Amiga 1990: 32-color 146x144 drawspace
• Crystals of Arborea IBM PC 1990: 16-color EGA 320x152 drawspace
• Eye of the Beholder IBM PC 1991: 256-color VGA 176x120 drawspace
• Fate Gates of Dawn Amiga 1991: 32-color 176x107 drawspace
• Black Crypt Amiga 1992: 64-color 208x140 drawspace
• Dark Queen of Krynn IBM PC 1992: 256-color VGA 88x88 drawspace
• Ishar: Legend of the Fortress IBM PC 1992: 256-color VGA 256x126 drawspace
• Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom IBM PC 1993: 256-color VGA 256x113 drawspace
• Liberation Captive 2 Amiga 1993-94: 256-color AGA 192x100 drawspace
• Lands of Lore IBM PC 1993: 256-color VGA 176x120 drawspace
• Hired Guns IBM PC 1993: 256-color VGA 4x 140x82 drawspaces
• Perihelion The Prophecy Amiga 1993: 32-color 176x120 drawspace
• Ishar 3: Seven Gates of Infinity IBM PC 1994: 256-color VGA 256x113 drawspace

Other:

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