Description
While the Sultan of Persia is fighting a war in a foreign country, his Grand Vizier Jaffar orchestrates a coup d'état. His way to the throne lies through the Sultan's lovely daughter. Jaffar kidnaps her and threatens to kill her if she refuses to marry him. Meanwhile, the man the Princess loves is thrown into the dungeon. He has only one hour to escape from his prison, defeat the guards on his way, and stop Jaffar before the terrible marriage takes place.
Prince of Persia is a 2D platformer that is commonly regarded as a progenitor of the cinematic platform genre. Rather than following the more common jump-and-run mechanics, it focuses on careful advancement through fairly complex levels, emphasizing the protagonist's vulnerability and survival aspect. Rotoscoping technique is used to give more realism to the animation of the characters' movements.
The protagonist must avoid deadly traps, solve some simple jumping and environmental puzzles (such as stepping on pressure plates to raise portcullis), and engage in sword fights with the guards. The player character has an infinite amount of lives, but has to restart at the beginning of a level each time he dies, and must complete the game within an hour. The hero starts with three units of health, which can be replenished with small health potions or permanently increased with large jars.
The Game Boy Color and SNES versions of the game feature additional levels and new enemies. The Genesis version has a new intro, an altered set of graphics and four new levels.
Alternate Titles
- "הנסיך הפרסי" -- Informal hebrew spelling
- "הנסיך - דו קרב בארמון" -- Hebrew spelling
- "Prince of Persia® Retro" -- iPhone/iPad title
- "Prince de Perse" -- French Amstrad title
- "PoP" -- Common abbreviation
- "Pers Prensi" -- Turkish title
- "プリンスオブペルシャ" -- Japanese spelling
Part of the Following Groups
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Trivia
Animations
The animations were modeled from live video. In particular, the Prince climbing onto a ledge was spliced from two different takes: Jordan's brother pulling himself up a ledge to his chest, and a reversed clip of his brother on top of the ledge climbing down. The technique use to animate the characters is called
Rotoscoping. It was also used in one of Mechner's other games,
Karateka.
Commodore 64 version
According to
the Prince of Persia Unofficial Website, a Commodore 64 version never was released. There was a preview created that played the theme and showed some scenes but you never see the Prince. It is unknown why there was never a C64 version.
Development and release
An excerpt taken from the, as of 2012, defunct official
Prince of Persia 3D web site http://www.pop3d.com/
Today, several dozen artists and programmers are involved in the creation of a computer game. But in the 1980's, computer games were normally created almost entirely by one person. And for Prince of Persia that person was Jordan Mechner, a then 25 year old recent college grad. Jordan created the story, characters, and levels for Prince of Persia. He programmed the game and drew the graphics. And when Jordan needed help, he didn't go far from home. His dad composed the original music. And his brother served as the Motion Study actor for the Prince. Truly a labor of love, Prince of Persia took nearly 4 years to be completed.
Mechner scored gold in 1989 when Prince of Persia was released. Described by PC Review as "an ever-present in any compiled list of classic games of all time," it has sold nearly 2,000,000 copies and won numerous awards, including "Game of the Decade" from Generation 4/Canal+ in 1997. The game was published first on the Apple II platform, but soon made it to virtually all platforms in existance at the time including: DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, NES, SNES, GameBoy, Sega Genesis, Sega Mega Drive, Sega CD, Game Gear, Commodore 64, and FM Towns. It's popularity was not confined to just the United States. In all, the game has been published in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, China, Korea, and Israel.
Manual
The manual for Macintosh/IBM release of the game had a figure of Prince in the right bottom corner of each spread. If you flip through the book, Prince would jump.
References to the game
Prince of Persia was alluded to in Episode 705 (
Escape from the BronxMystery) of the TV show
Science Theater 3000. During an underground chase scene, Tom Servo quips: "It looks like Prince of Persia."
SNES version
The North American Super NES release was censored --- a scene found in the Japanese version's introduction sequence showing the hero being tortured is missing from the US version. As a result, the music loses sync with what is happening on-screen.
Source code
On April 17, 2012, Jordan Mechner released the source code of the Apple II version. You can find it
here.
Awards
- Computer Gaming World
- November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #84 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
- February 2006 (Issue #259) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
- FLUX
- Issue #4 - #42 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time" list
- PC Gamer
- November 1999 - #43 Best Game of All Time
- Retro Gamer
- Issue #37 - #9 in the "Top 25 Platformers of All Time" poll
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