
A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans - michalbe
https://www.jordanmechner.com/prince-of-persia-30th-anniversary/
======
stevepike
The book he references ([https://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Jordan-
Mechner-e...](https://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Jordan-Mechner-
ebook/dp/B005WUE6Q2)) is a collection of journal entries he wrote while making
the game. It's been about ten year since I read it, so the details are fuzzy,
but it's a very raw retelling of the process of making a game basically
entirely alone and before the internet. I'd strongly recommend it to anyone
who writes software.

~~~
pmarreck
Imagine being a lone nerd before the Internet and not only being filled with
self-doubt, there was no social network to assure you that "your people" were
even actually _out there._

My graduating class was 180 people (very cliquey, I had very few friends).
Myself (and notably, a woman who is now a doctor) were the ONLY TWO people to
take programming classes at my high school (late 80's) (it was Turbo Pascal on
the earliest PS/2, for anyone who remembers). My exuberant cries of "THIS
CHANGES EVERYTHING!" when I first used modems and BBS's, fell on deaf ears. It
was a very lonely time to be a tech nerd... and yet... witnessing everything
that has happened firsthand has been absolutely amazing.

I gotta be honest, though... looking back, it was quite terrifying to be in
that position. If ANY powers-that-be had dropped ANY hint of "Just. You.
WAIT!" into my life at the time, it would have assuaged my insecurities
_tremendously_.

Here I am on a Commodore 64 circa 1985 (?) during a summer program:
[https://i.imgur.com/dTCqbYe.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/dTCqbYe.jpg) I believe I
was coding sprites to make a very basic game at the time. Karateka had
recently come out and it was inspiring!

~~~
munificent
I'm in the same generation.

I actually feel like it was easier in many ways back then. There were fewer
resources, yes, but also fewer distractions, fewer decisions to get stuck
paralyzed on, and fewer giants to compare myself against.

I wanted to make games that looked and played like the best games I'd played.
Well, that was SimCity, which had 16x16 pixel 16 color sprites. I could draw
those — not as well, but at least I had the technology available. I didn't
need to be able to model, texture, rig, light, and render a 3D model.

I needed a language to program in. Well, my local Waldenbooks only had a
couple of books on QuickBASIC and C. I did the former at first and then
switched to the latter once I realized the former was too slow. I didn't get
stuck trying to decide between C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Rust, and Python.
Unity, Unreal, Löve2D, Godot, GameMaker, etc.

I needed time to focus. I didn't have Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, HN, and an
endless parade of free-to-play games only a couple of clicks away. I was
_bored_ and coding filled the time.

It was lonely and limited, yes, but I believe solitude and constraints are
often the most important ingredients in creative work.

~~~
ben7799
I am a bit younger, graduated HS in 1995. But I'm essentially of the same
generation and learned on the same stuff. QBasic -> Turbo Pascal -> C in high
school. I made a simple video game in my senior year of high school that
cemented my decision to study computer science.

My father had internet access well before the web as an engineer so I was
sometimes able to get stuff. I remember buying some programming books to get
started and sometimes getting access to text file tutorials that must have
originated from BBSes.

But yah.. that was back when our abilities to concentrate were greater, there
were almost no distractions, and most of us were working alone.. no product
managers, no co-workers to disagree with or have them sow doubt, almost
nothing to hold back someone who was talented and motivated.

I almost feel like I got cheated as what I thought work was going to be like
basically doesn't exist unless you found your own company.

------
duggan
There is a post published on Jordan's blog covering this, might be easier to
read (no Facebook login nag): [https://www.jordanmechner.com/prince-of-
persia-30th-annivers...](https://www.jordanmechner.com/prince-of-persia-30th-
anniversary/)

~~~
jmkni
Thanks, noticing an increase in Facebook posts to HN, not loving it!

~~~
iamnotacrook
Yes, it would be nice if HN stopped just having a link to another site as the
article, and instead had a little abstract of what you're going to see there.
In the case of links to (un)popular sites (is there a version of 'infamous'
for stuff that's popular but sucks?) enough text so that it's possible to
search for alternative/original sources would be just swell.

~~~
dmix
That would piss off the content creators no doubt. Let people have the traffic
for the content they create.

dang et al do an amazing job of fixing links when needed and getting rid of
blog spam.

Banning FB outright isn't necessary because it's not always reposted elsewhere
and is far too popular. Despite still having an awful long-form reading UI/UX
despite years of designs and a focus on 'groups'...

------
Buetol
Here's a playable version hosted by the Internet Archive:
[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Prince_of_Persia_1990](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Prince_of_Persia_1990)

Enjoy !

~~~
monsieur_tigre
Oh man. Where did the time go? I still have the opening music stuck in my
head. I recall making a map on paper with my cousins of all levels so we could
memorize them to finish the game. Hours of playing late way past bed time.
Such a beautiful game with a romantic love story.. Man, where did the time go?

~~~
aksss
What's funny to me is how much I remember on first exposure to this now -
little tricks about how to get through that gate by jumping over the closing
trigger I just saw and took in stride. And it's been since the nineties! But I
can't remember my Dad's birthday still (it's one of two days, but I still
screw it up).

------
scoutt
I was a kid, but I remember disassembling the game with my dad to see if there
was a way to kill that fat swordman mid-game, that killed us every time.

We succeeded by getting the 'megahit' keyword. That was my very first session
of reverse engineering.

~~~
unwind
That is some mighty impressive parenting! Really cool, thanks for sharing.

------
dharma1
The sprite sheets (jumping, running, landing) on the first one were so rad
compared to anything else around that time, so fluid. That photo from his
office wall really shows how much effort went into them

~~~
rothron
Some of them were made from 'rotoscoping' video recordings of his younger
brother.

Videos exists:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKgLfqOVHco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKgLfqOVHco)

~~~
joemi
Wow. That's awesome. I could recognize most of the movements from the video...
Guess I played a lot of Prince of Persia back in the day. It's funny how the
brain can recognize specific movements like that, or like when you can
recognize a friend from far away just based on how they walk.

~~~
rothron
I remember well the movement that impressed me the most. The elaborate
changing of direction when running and then turning. It looked so natural, and
it was the first time I'd seen that in a game.

Most platformers still violate conservation of momentum and let you change
direction in mid air.

------
skocznymroczny
Recently I was playing through the PC version of the original Prince of Persia
again. Last time I played was as a kid and the game was very hard for me,
level 5 was about as far as I could get. I trained for two days until I got so
good at the game and memorized everything, that I was able to complete the
entire game in one go with zero deaths. Took about 25 minutes of ingame timer
to complete all stages.

~~~
hypeibole
That would make you 11th fastest player in the world.

The world record is 15:01.

[https://www.speedrun.com/pop1](https://www.speedrun.com/pop1)

~~~
londons_explore
If the 11th fastest is 25 minutes, and the fastest is 15 minutes, then
probably either there aren't many players, or not many players who post
speedrun times...

~~~
tialaramex
Note that that is a _glitched_ record. To get 15 minutes you need to not only
be very good at the game, you also need to know ways in which the game isn't
what it seems to be, e.g. IIRC Prince of Persia has glitches that let you
avoid doing some puzzles through careful timing, and skip most fights if you
know exactly how to do it.

This is a runner doing a glitched run, right at the start they don't even
collect the sword!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USv8OQbg73M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USv8OQbg73M)

Nick.

~~~
makomk
There's only one glitchless run on the leaderboard, in 21m 32s of in-game time
by the person with the 8th fastest glitched run. It really doesn't seem like a
very actively run game and glitchless is even less so. (Also, note that the
glitched record is 14m 29s in-game time and this is what runs are ranked on.
Completing it in 25 minutes on the in-game timer would make you 12th fastest
out of 14.)

------
Waterluvian
I loved that game but when you're 8 years old you often crawl through games
that are too old for you. The time limit made it unbeatable for me for years.
Well... That and my being petrified of the guillotine traps.

~~~
GonzaloQuero
They scared me as hell too! I guess nowadays we're more desensitized to
violence, but at that time, it seemed too gruesome for me.

~~~
Waterluvian
Lots of gaming things scared me as a kid but are also some of my fondest
memories of overcoming my fears. Some included:

\- The guillotines in PoP.

\- The death animation for victims of the TOZT Napalm Unit in Marathon.

\- The "red alert" warning combined with Kestrel fighter escort launching
sound in Escape Velocity.

\- The wolf 4 screens left in King's Quest 1 (I played this at about age 4 and
did not comprehend the idea of going somewhere else. I just kept trying to
outrun it)

\- Ampire Bot in Robot Odyssey

~~~
phjesusthatguy3
\- The skeletons stabbing you to death in Beyond the Forbidden Forest (C64)

\- The entire Chiller[0] arcade game. I still sometimes have nightmares about
it, and I've only ever walked by it once.

They both turn my stomach just thinking about them.

[0][http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/chiller/](http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/chiller/)

~~~
abakker
The moment when a Wight burst in your cluster of archers in Myth, and the game
voice just said “casualties”.

The butcher in Diablo 1, filled with a room of dismembered corpses.

~~~
lostlogin
Thanks for that, they were awful. The alien chatter from Marathon is up there
too and hearing that close by was terrifying. The rocket launcher noise offset
it a bit. More recently, the Half-Life face suckers were pretty bad.

~~~
Waterluvian
I don't think I've ever heard a more satisfying rocket launcher sound effect
than Marathon. That game had fantastic sound engineering.

------
philpem
I remember, back in my university days, being somewhat loosely involved with
the "POPsource" (Prince of Persia source code recovery). The team drove down
to Jordan Mechner's place with a DiscFerret and a bunch of other magnetic
media reading gear.

Given that DiscFerret was "new on the scene" at that point, that was pretty
fun to watch (from my seat on the other side of the pond). Shame Wired didn't
bother to get the facts right and their editor wasn't concerned (in the
slightest) with fixing the mistakes!

Still, it was mindblowing to be even a minor part of that.

(Only saying "the team" because I can't remember the names of all involved,
and I'd rather not risk missing someone out)

------
mratzloff
Fun fact: the original _Assassin 's Creed_ game was originally a sequel to
_Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time_ called _Prince of Persia: Assassin_. In
the original concept, you protected the prince instead of playing the prince
himself, playing in an open-world environment.

Ubisoft didn't like the idea of not playing the prince himself, so they spun
it out into a separate property and came up with all the other plot points
(genetic memory and Assassins vs. Knights Templar).

~~~
marapuru
Thanks for sharing this. Do you have a source for this fact? :)

~~~
anw
[https://www.polygon.com/features/2018/10/3/17924770/assassin...](https://www.polygon.com/features/2018/10/3/17924770/assassins-
creed-an-oral-history-patrice-desilets#Yxe3Pp)

This provides a pretty good overview of what happened.

What was originally an idea for a next-gen, open-world Prince of Persia game
became what is now the Assassins.

> ... I’m asking, “OK, so what’s next?” And I was told, “Let’s do a Prince of
> Persia, but for the next generation of consoles.”

> At first we thought that we could do a Prince of Persia open world. We did
> not [yet] have the concept of an assassin fighting in an open world

> since I’d just finished a game with a prince, I wanted a different
> character. I wanted the prince to have a different job than just being there
> waiting for mom and dad to die and take their place. So I wanted to have an
> action character — something that in his title, it was a job where you could
> actually see action right away.

~~~
marapuru
Thanks :)

------
aresant
So I’m reading this article and going to myself “Stripe Press” - wow sounds
like a cool little indie book press wish I had free time to pursue something
like that, maybe when I retire from my busy, important life . . .

And then reading down Jordan mentions “the founder of Stripe Press Patrick
Collision reached out to me”.

What? Really? THAT Stripe?

More evidence that there are either even more Collison brothers than meets the
eye covering for eachother or Stripe has a hell of a sleep deprevation skunk
works program going on . . .

~~~
aresant
PS - there’s also samples of the original journals that are mentioned to read
here -
[https://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/](https://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/)

------
rmbryan
A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans:

Thirty years ago today, I was at my Apple II, crunching on a six-week deadline
to finish Prince of Persia by mid-July to ship in September.

I know this because I wrote it in my journal. If I hadn't, those details would
have long since faded from my memory, along with the 6502 hex op codes I once
knew by heart.

In 1989, I could never have imagined that Prince of Persia would last this
long -- much less have foreseen it being ported to a future generation of game
consoles from the makers of the Walkman. (Or to the big screen by the producer
of Beverly Hills Cop.)

To all of you who've played, watched, and supported PoP over the years --
thank you! I've been especially moved by the things you've shared about the
ways PoP has touched your lives. Your kind and encouraging words have been an
inspiration to me.

Many of you have asked when there will be a new PoP game (or movie, or TV
series). If you feel that it's been a long time since the last one, you're not
alone. I wish I had a magic dagger to accelerate the process -- it would have
been poetic to time a major game announcement with this 30th-anniversary year.
But I'm only a small part of a bigger picture.

There is one PoP announcement I can make, and am happy to share with you.
Stripe Press, an imprint specializing in books about innovation and
technological advancement, will publish a hardcover collector's edition of
"The Making of Prince of Persia" \-- my 1980s original game development
journals, newly illustrated with notes, sketches, work-in-progress screen
shots, and as many visual features as we have the bandwidth to add by our
target "gold master" date of September 2019 (30 years after Apple II PoP
signed out of Broderbund QA). Oh, and there'll be an audiobook.

What I cherish about books:

For me as a kid who dreamed of creating mass entertainment, in the pre-
internet days, when you still needed a printing press to make a book and a
film lab to make a movie, the Apple II was a game-changer: a technological
innovation that empowered every user to innovate. Suddenly, I didn't need
adult permission (or funding) to tell a story of adventure that might reach
thousands -- and ultimately millions -- of people.

That direct connection between author and public is still possible today for
small indie games -- and for books. By contrast, making a major movie or AAA
game requires millions of dollars and hundreds of people. It's a thrilling
ride, and the rewards can be great, but by nature it's beyond the scope of
what one person or even a tight-knit creative team can accomplish alone.

So it felt very much in the magical 8-bit spirit when Stripe's co-founder
Patrick Collison emailed me to propose this book, and less than two months
later, we're doing it. For me personally, in the midst of longer-term projects
whose announcement is still a ways off, it's refreshing to add one whose
timeline is reckoned in months rather than years.

In 2012, when the PoP source code disks I thought I'd lost turned up in my
dad's closet, I discovered that an incredible retro-gaming fan and archivist
community has been keeping the flame of early game development knowledge
alive. The Internet Archive and Strong Museum of Play (which houses work
materials and artifacts from my past projects) are already on board to help us
make the collector's edition of "The Making of Prince of Persia" as feature-
rich as possible.

As we move toward beta, we'll document and share our progress online via
facebook, Instagram and Twitter. With luck, we'll be able to bring boxes of
printed hardcover books to PAX East in spring 2020 -- 30 years after the PC
release of Prince of Persia (which is the one most people remember). I hope to
see many of you there in person.

Until then, here's a fateful time-capsule post (and photo) from the week PoP
went alpha, thirty years ago. Reading it now, the drollest part is that I
still thought (as usual) I was about two weeks from the finish line.

And then there's the mullet.

\----- July 26, 1989

Left a stack of disks three inches high on my desk for Brian. Eleven for
sales, three for QA, plus seven more. Hope they work.

I played the whole game straight through for the first time ever, start to
finish, cheat keys turned off. Made it with seconds to spare (my hour ran out
while I was fighting the Grand Vizier).

You know what? It was fun!

There’s a level of tension generated when you know you can’t cheat, which is
completely absent from the normal playtesting I do. By the time that final
battle rolled around, I had a solid hour invested, and damned if I was going
to lose!

Still a few bugs -- two weeks of work, like I said -- but it’s a game, and a
damn good one. I’m content. I’m ready to go river rafting.

~~~
breakingcups
And the attached photo:
[https://imgur.com/a/vttHOgY](https://imgur.com/a/vttHOgY)

------
dejv
I love that book as well as Making of Karateka (his previous game), I read
both books for 5 times and each time when I started to have doubts about my
decision to be indie developer (not doing games anymore) and when I started to
think about finding a job after almost two decades without any success it did
renew my energy to continue.

The book for me is about spirit of working on your own projects, about
curiosity and passion on whatever you choose to pursuit.

------
wernsey
The PC version of Prince of Persia will always have a special place in my
heart.

The first time I saw it was when me and my brother were in a store with my mom
and saw this game running on a PC in the computer section. It must've been the
first game I ever saw with 256 colour VGA graphics.

That evening we told my dad about this amazing game we saw in the store with
graphics that looked like real people.

I think it was also the first time I saw a 3 1/2" disk. We still had a 286 at
home with 5 1/4" floppy drives.

It also later became the first game I ever heard with Sound Blaster music and
sound effects at a friend's house. That evening I told my dad how the music
sounded like real music.

I also remember us giving our old computer to my grandma for word processing
and she telling us that she tried to play PoP but got chopped up by the blades
every time because she had to close her eyes when she tried to go through
because she was too afraid.

------
mariusmg
Don't let it die Ubisoft, at least do a sequel for POP 2008 :)

~~~
als0
How does POP 2008 compare to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time?

~~~
baud147258
I'd say the combat (except the bosses fight) is better, since it's a series of
duel, compared to the confused brawls against respawning enemies. Boss fight
aren't as good and mostly too repetitive. It's easier, with no penalty for
successive failures, unlike SoT where, once the sand is depleted, it's back to
a checkpoint. But the difficulty of platform sequences isn't lower (I'd say
even harder for some). The visual style is good, but not as good as SoT (but
YMMV, of course).

Edit: Also, unlike the linearity of SoT, PoP 2008 has areas that can be
tackled in any order and you can go back to any area you've previously
cleared: it's kinda open-world.

~~~
baud147258
> kinda open-world

More like a big hub, with the various levels connected to it, but without any
loading screen between the hub and the levels.

------
waterside81
Did Jordan get wealthy from the initial release of Prince of Persia?

~~~
animal531
Probably he didn't make that much initially. But over a few years it was
ported to 20 odd other systems, had a sequel and then the big AAA games.

So he probably did pretty nicely for himself.

------
gdubs
Jordan’s diary was an enormous inspiration to me when I first read it, I don’t
know, close to 6 years ago now?

It got me to start my own journal. It also gave me the perspective of how long
a road it can be to finish a passion project.

------
sammorrowdrums
My Amiga, PoP, X-Out, Monkey Island and Crazy Sue consumed years of my life.

I regret nothing!

What a legend.

------
Chazprime
If anyone wants to play the Macintosh II version of it (one of the better
ports IMO), the Macintosh Repository has it:

[https://www.macintoshrepository.org/2985-prince-of-
persia](https://www.macintoshrepository.org/2985-prince-of-persia)

------
stared
Just by a coincidence, I've found a fan-made Prince of Persia voxel art:
[https://www.patreon.com/posts/prince-of-
persia-26600425](https://www.patreon.com/posts/prince-of-persia-26600425)

------
melling
Never played the game, but I really enjoyed his book about making the game.

------
martincmartin
_along with the 6502 hex op codes I once knew by heart._

A9 is LDA #, load accumulator immediate. I've forgotten all the others, but
will never forget that one.

~~~
zu03776
20 D2 FF for JSR $FFD2, which was the C-64 subroutine to output a character to
the screen. Or use 4C, to JMP instead for tail-call optimization.

I have a laminated copy, wallet-sized 6520 opcode page from an Apple II
programming manual, just in case I need it.

------
janvdberg
I will always love Stripe Press for selling a reprint of The Dream Machine and
even more for this news (a completely new book). This is great!

------
larrybud
prince megahit

~~~
marapuru
Funny thing you mention this. I also remember prince makinit. Which I (in my
non English tone) used to speak as mo (as in mother) -kee (as in keep) nit (as
in to knit)

