The world of video games has had several transcendent moments, and one of them was the release of Prince of Persia in 1989, with its spectacular animation quality. Documentation about the technique Jordan Mechner used in the mid-1980s is quite extensive, but if you want to see the characters in action, nothing is better than the original videos.
The Making of Prince of Persia
The history of Prince of Persia is much richer than we imagine. Jordan Mechner's attention to detail has given us access to much of the development process, which was compiled in the excellent book “The Making of Prince of Persia”, available through Amazon and Mechner's official site.
Other elements we can explore are his initial frustration during negotiations with Brøderbund, the success of Karateka in Japan (250,000 copies sold in just one month), and, of course, the technical challenges related to the rotoscoping process for Prince of Persia's animations, including acquiring the digitizer and dressing his brother David in white for the shots.
Each of these small entries is a true gem of enormous value, not only technically but also humanly, serving as inspiration and warning for all game developers today.
A Slow Start and a Dedicated Team
At first, the development of Prince of Persia was quite slow. In fact, Mechner himself admits that the project was virtually stalled for eight months while he explored the possibility of pursuing a career as a screenwriter and filmmaker. Luckily for all of us, Mechner found a way to finish Prince of Persia and give us the most extraordinary animations of the era, courtesy of his brother David, Robert Cook (who programmed Karateka for Atari and C64), Tina LaDeau (the princess), and Brian Eheler, product manager at Brøderbund.
The pressure to release the game was enormous. In October 1988, his earnings from Karateka had been only $166, and Mechner was effectively living on savings, but what he didn't know was that he was still a year away from bringing Prince of Persia to market.
The Road to Release and a Lasting Legacy
Moments of concern mixed with a struggling market (Brøderbund was having a hard time) made Prince of Persia's path very complicated, but it finally made its debut on October 3, 1989... and if we are still talking about the game, you can imagine its legacy.
People always talk about “quality bar” when defining animation in a game. Some managed to raise it a lot, but Jordan Mechner put it on a rocket and sent it to Mars orbit with Prince of Persia. From this game on, nothing inferior could be accepted. Prince of Persia had its sequels, but also gave way to wonders like Another World in 1991, and Flashback a year later.
