Prince of Persia

aka: Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia, Pers Prensi, PoP, Prince de Perse, Prince of Persia Retro
Moby ID: 196
Apple II Specs
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Conversion (unofficial) Included in See Also

Description official descriptions

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 platformer 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.

Spellings

  • הנסיך - דו קרב בארמון - Hebrew spelling
  • הנסיך הפרסי - Informal Hebrew spelling
  • プリンスオブペルシャ - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Apple II version)

19 People (12 developers, 7 thanks)

Original game design by
Original programming by
Original graphics by
Produced by
Music composed by
Live-Action Footage Modelled by
Special thanks to
Disk routines by
Sound routines by
Title screen by
Cover artwork by

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 81% (based on 83 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 524 ratings with 13 reviews)

There must be a rule about Grand Viziers being evil and called Jaffar.

The Good
The theme. I thought it was great how the evil guy was the Grand Vizier Jaffar. How ironic ;)



The Bad
This game was rather hard. It got really hard really quick too! I was stuck by the third level and had to resort to.. dum dum duuuumm.. The cheats. I couldnt help myself. Once I found out the cheat codes, I couldn't stop cheating.

This game required a lot of skill.. and in some games, skill I just dont have.

Time limits!! The game was hard enough as it was, without a dang 1hr time limit or he's going to kill my girlfriend.

The Bottom Line
Have a play, because overall its still a good game. If you're any good at platform games you shouldn't have any worries. If you're useless at jumping and sword fighting I'd suggest playing something else ;)

DOS · by Michelle (176) · 2002

The Omega Port of the 16-bit lot

The Good
When you start up the game you’ll be amazed by the rich colours, especially if you grew up with earlier ports. Intensive care has been put into the new graphics with textured backgrounds, foregrounds, props and animated objects in both the dungeon and palace levels. This game doesn’t just add a splash of colour, but adds to presentation. The NTSC version has text telling the story, but the PAL version has numerous dark cutscenes. The game over screen is pretty chilling. Pity that the boxart doesn’t resemble what you see in-game, but it looks okay. Finally the level music tracks blend well with the deadly atmosphere and are faithful to Francis Mechner‘s composition, though they are only in the PAL version.

Gameplay for the most part is faithful to the DOS port, apart from the sword fighting. In this PAL version, you get four extra challenging levels. If you’re used to puzzles in Prince of Persia 2, then these levels will be a real treat for you. Of course if you’re not up to the challenges you can enter a password to skip levels. Other extras include new exclusive types of potions with incredible effects.

The Bad
You might be awestruck by the brilliantly coloured and painted makeover, but careful attention to detail wasn't really applied everywhere. The guards are all the same colour, just like the Atari ST and Amstrad CPC versions. And for the Prince's shadow, the artists lazily did a recoloured palette of the prince and nothing that even resembles a shadow. The potions are coloured in such a way that you can’t tell exactly what they do, so you might accidentally poison the prince, though you can memorise the good and bad potions since they stay the same every new game.

The way that the controls work are partly broken for a couple of reasons. One of them is the slow, clunky movement, which feels almost a second late to pressing the D-pad. As a result you can't really mimic the glitchy tricks and moves that you could in the DOS version. At least you can jump past guards if you time your jumps correctly. Running through spikes only works if you're in the middle of the spikes and not running from the edge of them. The other major problem is the combat system. You don't parry using the up direction, but with the jump button, and it's completely useless, because when your parrying is hit, you sail back a bit so you don't get within a striking distance. Instead you have to carefully time your sword blows so that you accurately hit your opponent and hope that you don't get stabbed first. Finally the crouch ability is useless, as it doesn't let you crawl anywhere, you just squat down idly on the ground. What a waste of controls that only do half the functions!

The Bottom Line
The Megadrive version certainly took many steps up from its US Genesis counterpart with impressive added visuals and extra levels. But extravagant graphical makeovers alone are not enough to make a perfectly playable game. While there is added challenge for the hardcore platformer players, it's not going to work in their favour. If the problems with the controls could be fixed and the graphics tweaked a little bit more here and there, I would give this one high praise next to the SNES version. I'm not disappointed, but I'm not content. This title is deserving of being tried and played through, but it will take more time than the limited time before you can get used to the way it works. Similarly to Data East’s SMS port of Captain Silver the European release gets more features and longer gameplay than the US release. Go for PAL if you want to enjoy the full experience of the game. Shame we don’t get to see the Genesis/Megadrive features in POP mods.

Genesis · by Kayburt (30335) · 2022

This game blew me away.

The Good
I love the graphics in Prince of Persia. In a time when good VGA/MCGA graphics were hard to come by, this game just blew me away. The rotoscoping was something I'd never seen before and the details were more than what you would expect. The level design was also quite strong with lots of variations and challenges. The gameplay also worked quite nicely with smooth transitions between the different moves. Everything felt quite fluid and flowed nicely. And of course the action and puzzle solving had almost perfect balance. There was enough action so keep you on your toes, but not so much that it distracted from the ultimate goal.

The Bad
The sound effects were quite weak and the music was non existent. However, I always felt that early PC games with music never quite worked right. The music was always an afterthought and not something that was part of the game. So, in a sense I'm glad they didn't do anything there.

The Bottom Line
You have to rescue the princess from the evil Jaffar. You've been thrown into the dungeons and have 60 minutes to escape and save the princess from being forced to marry Jaffar or face death. On your way, you will have to battle numerous enemies and solve countless puzzles. Time is your constant enemy. You can't go too fast and make a fatal mistake but at the same time you mustn't loiter around. A must for all gamers.

DOS · by Brian Hirt (10409) · 1999

[ View all 13 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Developed by Mechner or Brøderbund? Игги Друге (46654) Jul 29, 2014
Triangular Version - Info Please Arjon van Dam (1247) Feb 19, 2013
ZX Spectrum UNOFFICIAL port Rola (8486) Aug 5, 2012
Jordan Mechner made the source code available chirinea (47504) May 26, 2012

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Prince of Persia appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

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, BBC Micro and Atari 8-bit amateur versions

According to the Prince of Persia Unofficial Website, a Commodore 64 version was not released at time. There was a preview created that played the theme and showed some scenes but the game never emerged. It is unknown why. A Commodore 64 port was made at last by an independent coder in 2011. Information is available at popc64.blogspot.com

Bitshifters also released a port of the game to the BBC Micro. It took advantage of the Apple II game code being made public by Jordan Mechner and the hardware similarities between the Apple II and the BBC Micro, which share the same CPU. It needs 128k of RAM and is available from here.

And finally, on december 2021 yet another amateur version was revealed, this time for the Atari 8-bit computers. It is available here in disk and cartridge formats. It requires 128K of RAM, so it won't work in every one of these computers.

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."

Censorship in the 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

  • Amiga Power
    • May 1991 (Issue #00) - #12 in the "All Time Top 100 Amiga Games"
  • 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

ZX Spectrum version

A version for the ZX Spectrum was in development by the same people that made the SAM Coupé port but it was never released due to licensing problems with Domark. Later a Russian team released an unofficial Spectrum port of the game.

Information also contributed by Big John VW, Chentzilla, leileilol, LepricahnsGold, Mickey Gabel, NewRisingSun, PCGamer77, Sean Gugler, and William Shawn McDonie.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Donny K..

Sharp X68000 added by Rola. Wii added by Charly2.0. iPad added by MrMamen. Nintendo 3DS added by CrankyStorming. Amiga added by Famine3h. SEGA Master System added by Bock. Game Gear added by chirinea. PC-98 added by Infernos. Apple II added by KnockStump. TurboGrafx CD added by Kaminari. Macintosh added by Zovni. SAM Coupé, iPhone added by Kabushi. SEGA CD added by Blood. Atari ST added by Terok Nor. Amstrad CPC added by cafeine. NES added by Longwalker. FM Towns added by Unicorn Lynx. SNES, Genesis added by Syed GJ. Game Boy added by quizzley7. Game Boy Color added by Jim Fun.

Additional contributors: IJan, MAT, Adam Baratz, Roedie, Jeanne, Jalal Noureddine, Kabushi, Henry Calot, Martin Smith, Norbert J, Pseudo_Intellectual, Crawly, Neville, ctrl turk, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, MrMamen, yenruoj_tsegnol_eht (!!ihsoy), Jo ST, qpossum, FatherJack, ZeTomes.

Game added August 10, 1999. Last modified March 27, 2024.