If you ask a person that is over 20 years old what was the first game they ever played, there is decent chance that their answer will be Prince of Persia. But originally it didn’t look like this will be a hit as the original version for the Apple II sold only about 7000 copies. But then it came to the PC and the rest is history

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Yes, Prince of Persia is in it’s essence a very simple game, but actually beating it, that a completely different story – just imagine, you HAD to finish it in 60 minutes. That was the time limit set to save the sultan’s daughter as that was the time she got to decide whether she will marry the evil wizard Jaffar. If she rejects him and the Prince cannot manage to save her in time, she dies.

The fact that some people actually managed to save her in less then 15 minutes (and the world record is 13 minutes 45 seconds can be found on YouTube) is one thing. But most people couldn’t even beat it. The “megahit” cheat is one of the most well known cheats of all time along with IDDQD from Doom and the Konami code. And to be honest I fully understand those who used the cheat code as the game was very hard and there are a few spots in the game that still give me nightmares. Remember the fight with your clone? How about the abyss? Or the stupid green vial that turns the screen.

But let’s go back to the development of Prince of Persia for a moment that took 4 years. That’s an insane development period for the late 80ties. This lengthy development happened because the whole game was created by Jordan Mechner alone and he was such a perfectionist that he didn’t release the game until he was 100 % satisfied with his creation.
Mechner said that he originaly came up with the idea for Prince of Persia while watching the opening scene of the Raiders of the Lost Arch. He also used the experience gained while developing Karateka and he also wanted to add some puzzling to the action of Karateka. Apart from the already mentioned Indiana Jones movie, the Movie The Adventures of Robin Hood and the Arabic masterpiece One Thousand and One Nights were also heavily influential while developing Prince of Persia.

The vision Mechner had was more then ambitious and he even had to eventually scrap some of the original plans he had for the game (for example, originally there was supposed to be even a level editor), yet the final product was more then respectable. The character animations were incredible for that time and are still awesome looking even today if you like pixelart. It was made using rotoscopy – a technique used before motion capture became the norm. Mechner used a camera to capture the walk, run, jump and turns of his younger brother and then transferred them into game, this immortalizing his younger brother. BTW: You can find the shots on YouTube(bit.ly/princepohyby) link in the video description and they are fascinating and fun to watch.

The community around Prince of Persia was huge for its time and people created many modifications with new graphics and levels. Probably the best known is 4D Prince of Persia.
Prince of Persia has been ported to over twenty different platforms from the SNES up to a modern remake for cell phones by Gameloft from 2007 that took the original game and gave it new and improved graphics.

For me personally, Prince of Persia is one of my earliest gaming memories alongside games like Prehistorik, Wolfenstein3D or the original Civilization. I fondly remember spending hours playing it, switching after each death with my cousin and being SO bad at it that you’d probably laught at me.

So, that’s it for today guys. Hope you like the review and if you did, please consider upvoting the review and following my blog. And comment, if you have something you would like to add. See you guys later with more gaming content.