Prince of Persia for PC
Rather than attending another double-microprocessors lecture on a Friday afternoon, I would bunk off my lectures and play games on an early 386 PC that was owned by one of my housemates. This was when PCs were not even used in the computer lab, as they were deemed to be just for word processing and not serious programming machines. PC gaming was in its infancy, focused mainly on flight and other simulations, and first-person shooter games like Doom were still years away. That PC had exactly three games on it: Arkanoid, Prince of Persia and Lemmings, and between them they accounted for a worrying proportion of my degree.
Prince of Persia on the PC, recorded on my Steam Deck: a sword fight, some spikes and a restorative potion, which is more or less the whole game in 25 seconds.
Run, Jump, Hang, Die: How It Plays
Prince of Persia was the exception to all those flight simulators: a platform adventure game from Broderbund and programmer Jordan Mechner that was a landmark in computer graphics, due to its use of realistic character movement. Your hero, the Prince of the title, could run, jump, hang from ledges, climb and fight with incredible realism, as the sprites were based on video recording of real people. Armed with a scimitar, he would stylishly fence with the various enemies encountered through the game, including skeletons, palace guards and eventually his nemesis Jaffar.
Prince of Persia was a combination of free-running and pitfall type obstacles, with many traps along the way which required careful timing to avoid, including spiked pits, collapsing walkways and gates that slam shut just as you reach them. Your character had a row of little red triangles for health, which could fortunately be topped up by drinking potions littered around the various levels (though not all of them, as some potions are best left alone). The ultimate objective is to battle the evil Grand Vizier Jaffar and rescue the Sultan’s daughter, and you have exactly 60 minutes to do it. The clock keeps ticking whether you’re making progress or falling down the same pit for the twelfth time.
A similar approach to animation could also be found in the later Sega Megadrive game Flashback, where your character had a huge range of abilities rendered in smooth flowing graphics.
A Brother in a Car Park: Making Prince of Persia
Mechner had already had a hit with Karateka on the Apple II, and in 1985 he set about making the Prince move like a real person. His method was to videotape his younger brother David, then 15, running, jumping and climbing in loose white clothes, reportedly in a car park in Chappaqua, New York. The Apple II had no way of importing video, so Mechner traced the footage frame by frame to build the animation. For the sword fighting, he went to the films instead, tracing Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone’s final duel in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). So the Prince runs like a teenager from New York and fences like a Hollywood swashbuckler, which is a better combination than it sounds.
It took four years. Prince of Persia came out on the Apple II in 1989, published by Broderbund, just as the Apple II was on its way out. For most of us in the UK it was the PC and Amiga versions in 1990 that we actually played, including a group of students who should have been in a lecture. The story has a coda: in 2012, Mechner’s father turned up the original Apple II disks during a spring clean, and the source code was rescued from the 23-year-old floppies and published online.
What They Said at the Time
The UK magazines reviewed it as it arrived on the PC, Amiga and ST at the end of 1990, and they were almost uniformly delighted. Zero gave it 91% in February 1991:
“Prince Of Persia is a swashbuckling romp that smacks of classic Errol Flynn movies.” — Zero, February 1991
Which is more accurate than its reviewer probably realised. He was also taken with the detail: “Fall past a ledge and press fire and your hero grasps the ledge by his fingertips. The sprite dangles there swinging his little legs.” Computer + Video Games went for 90%, with Richard Leadbetter reaching for the poetry: “watching Prince of Persia is like witnessing poetry in motion – playing it is better still.” The One went higher still with 93%. Not bad for a game whose hero was, at heart, a teenager in a car park.
Ports, Sequels and a Hollywood Film
Originally released on the Apple II, it was later converted to just about everything, including the Megadrive, SNES, Master System and Game Boy. The sequel, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, followed in 1993, and Ubisoft reinvented the series in 2003 with The Sands of Time on the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube, which kept the acrobatics and added the ability to rewind your mistakes (a feature I could have used in 1990). There was also a Hollywood film, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), where the Prince was transformed into a free-running hero played by Jake Gyllenhaal. The series is still going, most recently with The Lost Crown in 2024.
Playing Prince of Persia Today
I had another go while updating this article, on my Steam Deck, and it holds up remarkably well: the animation still looks lovely, the traps are still unfair, and the 60 minutes still go far too quickly. I should confess that I never finished it, either back then or this time round. Jaffar remains undefeated, at least by me.
For me however it is the original game that is the stand out in the series, and it was well worth missing all those lectures for.
Sources
Quotes from elsewhere, for anyone who wants to read more:
- Zero, February 1991 and Computer + Video Games, January 1991, Internet Archive
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