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
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A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans
11–20 of 102 posts
Re: A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans
#12I 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.
They were so scary!
Re: A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans
#13I 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.
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.
Re: A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans
#14I 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.
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.
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
Re: A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans
#15prince megahit
Re: A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans
#16So 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 . . .
Re: A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans
#17Recently 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.
That would make you 11th fastest player in the world. The world record is 15:01. https://www.speedrun.com/pop1
11th fastest player in modern times... without backing up or denouncing op I believe there must have been, back in the day, several top players going completely unrecognised. Most players would only have their immediate circle of friends to compare to.
Re: A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans
#18So 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…
PS - there’s also samples of the original journals that are mentioned to read here - https://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/
Re: A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans
#19The book he references (https://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Jordan-Mechner-e...) 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.
Re: A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans
#20Recently 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.
That would make you 11th fastest player in the world. The world record is 15:01. https://www.speedrun.com/pop1
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...