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The Real Story Of Prince Of Persia
The original Prince of Persia for the Apple II is considered one of the most influential PC games of all time, but the game actually had a rollercoaster development process. The game was suppose to take a year to develop, but ended up taking more than three, and almost wasn’t a commercial success. Here are a few other tidbits that you probably don’t know, from creator Jordan Mechner's GDC discussion.
- Before working on the game, creator Jordan Mechner tried to write a How To book for solving Rubik Cubes.
- Mechner filmed his 16-year-old brother for reference video for the animations.
- The game was briefly called Thief of Bagdad, but Mechner changed it to the working title Prince of Persia, which stuck.
- The original plans for the game included a level editor, which would let players create their own in game levels.
- Development got stalled for a week when Jordan Mechner got addicted to a leaked hack of Tetris.
- Mechner captured images from the 1930 Robin Hood movie to produce the combat in the game.
- Jordan Mechner used to have a mullet (but it’s okay, it was the ‘80s).
- The game didn’t sell well when it first released, because the Apple II market was declining. It wasn’t until years later, when the Mac version released, that Prince of Persia became a financial success.
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