Rate top gamesPrince of Persia (1989)
About
From Wikipedia: Prince of Persia is a 1989 fantasy cinematic platformer originally developed and published by Brøderbund and designed by Jordan Mechner for the Apple II. In the game, players control an unnamed protagonist who must venture through a series of dungeons to defeat the Grand Vizier Jaffar and save an imprisoned princess.
Much like Karateka, Mechner's first game, Prince of Persia used rotoscoping for its fluid and realistic animation. For this process, Mechner used as reference for the characters' movements videos of his brother doing acrobatic stunts in white clothes and swashbuckler films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood.
The game was critically acclaimed and, while not an immediate commercial success, sold many copies as it was ported to a wide range of platforms after the original Apple II release. It is believed to have been the first cinematic platformer and inspired many following games in this subgenre, such as Another World.[4] Its success led to the release of two sequels, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame and Prince of Persia 3D, and two reboots of the series, first in 2003 with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which led to three sequels of its own, and then again in 2008 with the identically-titled Prince of Persia.
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Prince of Persia (1989) reviews and comments
My first contact with Prince was circa 1993/1994, when I was about 9-10 years old. At that time, I had an Olivetti PC1 (https://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/prodestpc1.html) as the only PC, already obsolete at the time and offered by an uncle. It had a small (mono) CGA b&w screen (last row on the screenshot below) and a PC speaker, and PoP ran slow, the movements seemed in slow motion, so of course that if we timed, the 60 minutes lasted much longer. I don't know how much time I've spent till I finally defeated Jaffar and finished the game, I only remember that it seemed like ages.
I only returned to PoP in 2020, and finally played the DOS version in VGA, with a sound card (first row above). It took me like 15-20 attempts to re-finish the game, what a nostalgic joy! This brings up that for me, although is easy to master Prince's controls (only 5 keys, 4 directions + action key) it is a difficult game, one small mistake and you're dead (and if you die too many times, without cheats you easily run out of time...).
Prince of Persia is a masterclass in animation, graphics, level design, sound, controls and storytelling (great story, levels and plot twists along the journey), and was mainly developed by Jordan Mechner alone on an Apple II. I am simultaneously finishing reading his PoP journals (which I also highly recommend), and now I'll play Prince 2. Along with Duke Nukem 3D, Prince of Persia is for sure the most important videogame of my life.
Btw, on Windows 10, if you go to Microsoft store you can grab Prince 1 + 2 for free (and for 2$, remove ads). If you wish, you can even enable load/saved games, for 5$ (no, thank you).