The Tungsten PDA

The traditional games of Eastern origin such as Go or Mahjongg are a good way to exercise our brains in spare time. Both can be played on our Palm, as we saw in the blog AlucardX in the case of Go, and in this blog in the case of Mahjongg Solitaire. A game that is also worth a try is the Ishida. However, his appearance did not deceive us: As was the case with the lone Mahjongg, but is played on a board where they are placed runes, and is surrounded by a halo of mysticism, it is no thousandth game, but that was invented by Michael Feinberg and developed by Michael and Ian Gilmann Sandig in the year 1989 for Macintosh. A year later the PC version.

The original version of Ishida, Mac

Ishida is a board game in which the goal is to put a number on a board of stones, marry them according to their color and decoration. You can play as a lone, for two players, by a player against the computer or cause the machine to play against itself. There are a total of 72 stones, which are of six layouts combine with six colors, so there are two stones of each type.

At the beginning of the game there are six stones on the board: four in the corners and two in the center, placed diagonally. They will have different colors and designs, but otherwise will be random. The rest of the stones will appear one by one into a corner, and the goal is to put them all on the board, with the following rules:

• Only a stone can be placed next to each other, besides the diagonals do not count.
• Stones coming to be married by color or design.
• If we place a stone next to two others, has married at least one color with another, and by design.

There are two ways to play this game, the "old" and the modern:

• In ancient stone put each scored one. Put it among the other four extra score. The player who wins place all the stones, if none does so will win more times that has managed to place a stone among other four. If you simply want to place all the stones, it is more logical to assign ranks to the designs, colors and columns.
• In the modern, the goal is to achieve a higher score. The more rocks married to a new place, we will achieve a higher score: one, two, four or eight points according to marry one, two, three or four stones from the board. Furthermore, if we get married with four stones, the subsequent movements of the game score twice from that point on, and if we succeed more often married with four stones, the effect is cumulative. Finally, to finish the game an extra bonus will be awarded depending on the stones that are yet to be put on the board, being the largest in case of putting all the stones.

The strategy of the game is logically bring the board to fill the time you get the highest number of games played with four marrying stones. In the gameplay is a priority to clean the old board, while the modern is more important to generate these special ratings.

Palm Ishida has a very neat appearance

There are versions of this game for a variety of platforms. Of course, there's a version of Ishida for our Palm. It is free and free, and includes several designs in the decoration of the stones and wood panels, and high-quality sound effects. All these elements are installed optionally, as they require plenty of space for storage.

Alchemy, Astraware, adds new rules

There is a variant of this game developed by Astraware, the famous Alchemy. It adds new features like pieces that can eliminate the adjacent board, others that are "wild cards" and can be placed next to any other, and the possibility of dropping up to two pieces every time we do not know where to put them (though we put two more pieces on the dashboard below to once again take this opportunity).

In short, an entertaining game with traditional Japanese flavor but not so, although not necessarily cease to be also very entertaining.

By: Mark Gonzalez Troyes in Palm Analysis
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