Ishidō: The Way of Stones

Development

Producer Brad Fregger:

The Ishido story is full of interesting trivia but my favorite is the story of Ian Gilman the programmer for the original Macintosh version. Ian was 14 when he sent me his first Mac game and while I never published it, I was extremely impressed. By the time Ishido came around I knew that I wanted him to do the game. Trouble was he lived on Bainbridge Island across the water from Seattle and I lived in Sunnyvale, California; this meant that I would be long distance managing a kid who wasn't even 18 yet. The original publisher, EPYX, wouldn't hear of it. They wanted Ishido to be their lead product for the Christmas season and they didn't want to trust it to a kid who lived on an island 1000 miles from where we were. I finally convinced them to give him a chance but their agreement depended on Ian coming to San Francisco to be interviewed by their technical people. This was a problem, we were a small development company and I couldn't afford to fly him down and pay all his expenses. I called him, "Ian, good news and bad news...we got a chance for you to do Ishido, but you've got to come down here and be interviewed and I can't afford the expenses."

"I have to come to San Francisco right away?" he asked.

"Yep...as soon as possible."

"Well my girlfriend won a trip to San Francisco on the radio last night and were scheduled to come this Friday. Is that soon enough?"

Miracles do happen...he came down, passed the test and did a terrific job...not only on Ishido, but on Heaven and Earth also...two fantastic games.

You can read the rest of the story in my book, "Lucky That Way".

Macintosh version

Ishido was originally released on the Macintosh in 1989 and published by Publishing International. The Macintosh version earned 5 mice from MacUser Magazine (their highest rating). A few years later, Interplay published the Macintosh version as one of their intial MacPlay products.

Awards

• Amiga Joker
  • Issue 01/1991 – #4 Best Strategy Game in 1990