El primer juego del príncipe que camina por las paredes y que lucha con movimientos acrobáticos fue desarrollado para DOS, y nos pone en el papel de un joven aventurero que debe sortear numerosas trampas, peligros y enemigos para salvar a la princesa de Persia y acabar con la tiranía del malvado Jaffar. Con un gameplay bastante básico que se centra en la exploración, la cautela y un poco de acción, Prince of Persia era uno de esos títulos que retaban al videojugador, ofreciendo una experiencia reconfortante que deja huella. Uno de los buenos juegos de antaño, y origen de una de las sagas más famosas de videojuegos hoy día.

played using SDLPoP thanks to the PoP Original Trilogy site

The original Prince Of Persia from 1989 is something I feel people know, but haven't played. Granted, this is in large part in it not having seen that many ports in a while, which like, I don't really know why considering how influential and historical it is to the gaming landscape, buuuuut there's been worse cases out and about...

Jordan Mechner was onto somethin with this one, on note of that. It being his second game following Karateka, he pooled a lot more influences - Raiders Of The Lost Ark, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and (obviously) the Arabian Nights for notable cases - and rotoscope tech when creating this, and while it wasn't an immediate success, it slowly but surely started to get the acclaim and appeal it has today thanks to ports and word of mouth. I recommend watching an interview he did for ArsTechnica back in 2020 for more detail and behind the scene processes, it's quite a fascinating thing to see unfold. It's no wonder this basically kickstarted the "cinematic platformer" subgenre, even if I think the terminology is a little corny.

And honestly? This still holds up pretty dang well, all things considered. Controls are heavy and clunky, sure, but considering the design and intent of the game it's w/e, plus you can get a feel and get used to how they handle pretty easily (well, maybe not the jumping, but even then it's fiiiine). Running/walking, jumping, swordfighting, it all feels and flows pretty well with one another, rarely did they get in the way of doing the basic tasks. What actually mangles that aspect, is the level design, which is something that definitely felt like was getting stretched thin as development went along. I hesitate to call it bad, cause it really isn't, but I do have to wonder if Mechner intended for it to become an errand of trail-and-error, getting everything done in a perfect shot or risk failing completely. Having to figure out you need to jump and hit specific platforms to fall in order to climb up and progress, with almost nothing telling you that, is A Moment for sure.

I mean, there is truth to that anyway. You have a set timer of 60 minutes to complete the game, meaning you basically have to memorize (or uh, savescum, thanks to the aforementioned SDLPoP port) the level design in order to mitigate and work out the the best possible strat in order to have sufficient time leftover. In essence, it's training you to speedrun, which in hindsight is pretty funny. I'll say though, it definitely got me to figure out little optimizations, such as instead running from sword fights when necessary, or knowing the exact movement and jump pattern to bypass spikes, falling platforms, pits, and guillotines. On top of keeping task of all of this, there's also collectibles in the form of Mega Potions, of which there are 7 hidden, and lemme tell you getting all of them while still having enough time left over is no easy task. I barely managed to get to the end and defeat Jafar with just 3 minutes to spare, though I'd be lying if I said most of it wasn't a thrill.

There's also one last bit to share, and it's that there's a Shadow Prince that appears after jumping through a mirror in one of the levels halfway in. After doing so, he appears as sort of an obstacle and troll, stealing away an MP from you, forcing you down from the end of Level 6 onto Level 7, and culminating in a penultimate boss where to win you must... put away your sword, merge with it, and afterwards an entire row of platforms appear, letting you get to the exit and Jafar. Granted, by 1989, Zelda II was a thing that's existed for two years and had shown its take on the formula, but still, very cool thing to see done regardless, especially considering PoP89's story is just "rescue the girl".

PoP89 is far from a game I love - I'll sing praises to Sands Of Time either in a review retrospective or when I replay it again down the line - but it's definitely a game I admire and like all the same. Considering how short it is in the grand scheme, I might just keep the files on standby, in case I want to kill an afternoon's worth of time while doing something. There's also like, all those ports, but from the looks of it they really just fancy up the graphics and such. Did you know the Sega CD version has cutscenes and voice acting? I didn't until now! It's also boasting a little more blood, which is surprising to see. If I was to give any port a lookover, it'd probably be the SNES one considering that has 20 levels compared to the original's 12, and from what I've seen they're all vastly different and in some cases, harder. Also, the OST for it kinda bangs? I genuinely wasn't expecting that lmao.

It's not groundbreaking but it has amazing things, i never saw a atmosphere like of this game, the soundtrack is just awesome and the world the game takes place make it so mysterious.

But besides all this cool things, the gameplay can be repetitive and clunky. Personally, i like the clunky part because it's really easy to get used to and it ends up being part of the charm of the game but the repetitive part makes me never want to play again.

Basically, it's worth a try. I am happy just listening to the amazing Soundtrack and remembering the good memories i had with this one.

Gorgeous. Addictive. Infuriatingly difficult.

Note: I honestly don't know why anyone would prefer any of the other versions to the original Apple II one or to the initial DOS / Amiga ports (which polishes up the original while maintaining the simplicity and flatness). People talk about the SNES version having "better" graphics. Yeah, I guess if you like a bunch of pointless detail being added that makes it look like lots of other platformers from the era. The beauty of the original game is its striking minimalism (which, incidentally, helps the smoothness of the rotoscoping shine).

Even without considering the technical feats achieved by Jordan Mechner in Prince of Persia (please watch the Ars Technica video if you are interested) this is still a masterpiece by design alone.

I love how you are left alone to figure out what to do - there's so many mechanics and how you interact with your environment/enemies is a lot more than "walk here" or "slash this enemy". The 60 minute time limit is perfect to give you a sense of urgency - it fits the narrative considering your hot Persian girlfriend is in danger.

To be able to beat this not only your puzzle-solving skills have to be on point but also your execution which is the perfect harmony for me. A very dangerous place, you need to tread lightly as death is always around the corner but at the same time you only have so much time so you need to have a sense of balance when it comes to how much time you have left and how likely you are to die if you rush into something. In any case you will die a lot - the 60-minute timer will finish a lot of times before you are able to beat this but to do so is incredibly rewarding.

Then you also have the fluid animations and beautiful minimalistic aesthetic of the Apple II version or DOS/Amiga ports.

Incredibly surprised by Prince of Persia - it has everything I love in video games.

It’s easy to point to the late 90s and early 2000s as the collective “moment” when videogames truly began harboring cinematic ambitions. That third dimension brought with it a whole new bag of tricks, and no one was shy about dumping them out. We might be tempted to blame that generation for some modern triple-A trends, but of course, this desire is about as old as videogames themselves. Even if we don’t count the evocative text adventures of the 70s and 80s, the parser-based adventure games pioneered by Sierra and the then-titled “LucasFilm Games,” early CRPGs, game adaptations of movie scenes like The Empire Strikes Back on Atari, and ventures like the barely interactive Dragon’s Lair all sought to marry the theatrical qualities of more prestigious media with games’ unique ability to put you in the driver’s seat. Some of these efforts paid off in fulfilling their own respective goals, but what they couldn’t and often still rarely accomplish is a cinematic cadence and consistency. Playing The Secret of Monkey Island, it’s impossible to truly feel that everything happening at all times carries real dramatic weight. Action games are almost always predicated on a fundamental asymmetry between the player character and everything else — goombas can’t interact with fire flowers — or otherwise bespoke elements whose rules don’t apply to the rest of the game world — Ocarina of Time’s eye switches are only affected by arrows, and cannot interfere or be interfered with by any other means. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this kind of design, I’ve singled out a couple of the greats to make that as clear as possible, but it’s this general lack of internal consistency across the medium which makes 1989’s Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia stand out.

Whether or not you feel that developing a “dramatic game system” is a reasonable or misguided goal, or if “verisimilitude” and “internal consistency” are necessary in achieving it, there’s a level of cohesion to the game’s storytelling and mechanics which I can only describe in these terms. Prince of Persia doesn’t have an incredibly substantive plot (escape the dungeon and save the princess), but the confidence with which it (mostly) wordlessly conveys and provokes the player to experience that story still impresses. It’s in the way the game doesn’t waver in its visual perspective, always presenting the world in profile even during cutscenes, never showing anything which doesn’t have direct gameplay implications. The consistency of its visual language in and outside of playable moments gives weight and narrative credibility to the time spent playing, there is no strict divide between “story” and “gameplay” moments. There are only two truly notable caveats to Prince of Persia’s otherwise spotless coherence, but both are purposeful and arguably necessary for the game to function (respawning after death, and switching between the modes of general movement and combat). Its more widely lauded successor, Eric Chahi’s Another World, though great, is stitched out of setpieces whose solutions have no bearing on the rest of the game, but Prince of Persia never introduces any rule that won’t become relevant or useful ever again. Each space is a system of interlocking parts, where the drama emerges directly from the fact that you’re given almost perfect information about the consequences of engaging with those parts.

Sounds like a pretty clear-cut platforming videogame, but there are some important distinctions to keep in mind. In the shoes of our rotoscoped hero, even the simplest geometric level design must be approached as though it were a real space. if you want to descend a platform, you must step carefully to the edge so as to avoid falling off, turn around, lower yourself down using your hands, and let go of the ledge to drop to your feet. If you want to leap further than the width of a single tile, you’re gonna need a running start to do it. Spike traps can be tiptoed across, but running or jumping will create the force needed for them to pierce through. Failing to take into account the weight and durability of your fragile human body will always result in a gruesome death, but you’re not the only one for whom that applies. Guards litter the hallways of the castle, and all of them are susceptible to the same grisly horrors as the player character. The imposing guillotines, pressure plates and falling tiles can all be used against your adversaries, they’re even as vulnerable to fall damage as you are. Prince of Persia’s environments are built out of only a handful of elements, but each one is an unalienable fact of the setting, and must be treated as such. It’s not the layouts of these levels which create that all-important sense of verisimilitude, fun as they can be to explore and find new routes around, but the consistency and believability of their laws.

The sheer amount of danger lurking around every corner and crevice coupled with the level of commitment required of the player’s inputs means it’s tempting to take a very slow and methodical approach to Prince of Persia, but we can’t have that. For it to succeed as a dramatic game, every moment has to carry a degree of real importance. To reference the canon Mechner was drawing from, one of Indiana Jones’ most prominent filmmaking techniques is “the ticking clock.” Rewatch any of those movies, and you’ll find that there’s almost always some manner of time bomb or closing door in the background of an action scene, which applies an underlying layer of tension to every fist-swinging, heart-pounding moment of struggle. It’s no less effective in an interactive setting. The game is filled with both short and long-term ticking clocks, whether it takes the form of a pressure plate which opens a gate just long enough to slip by after a death-defying leap, or the Grand Vizier’s massive hourglass which contextualizes the time limit looming over the whole game. These push the player to be bold in their performance, encouraging them to take risks in places they otherwise wouldn’t. They heighten the threat of obstacles and draw the player even more deeply into every moment of committed action. Win or lose, they’ll only have one hour to reach the end. That in itself also contributes to the game’s “cinematic” sensibility, its length makes it as digestible as a short film, and the level design is as tightly paced as any action movie. The designs of its stages are clearly considered with an eye for that hour-long playtime — their battles and sizes grow longest in the middle before becoming a triumphant string of victories leading to the final confrontation. It helps that there are no menus or extraneous elements involved. Instead, each area transitions directly into the next. Once mastered, the performance of that arc becomes a thing of beauty.

The game comes together to form an experience almost as nail-biting to spectate as it is to play, but that can’t be attributed to its adherence to these design principles alone. Rather, it’s the way it plays with the expectations those rules create which elevates Prince of Persia beyond its successors in the “cinematic platformer” genre. The game’s heart lies in the recurring “Shadow Man” who disrupts and undermines the player’s efforts at every turn, stepping on pressure plates to shut doors and stealing potions which are meant to increase the player’s maximum health. It lies in the surprise skeleton battle, the magic mirror, the levitation potion, and a penultimate encounter that had to have inspired Final Fantasy IV. It takes every opportunity to use its established rules for dramatic purposes, and never deviates from that goal. As Noah Caldwell-Gervais recently said of Sekiro, Prince of Persia is “cinematic in a way that cutscene-driven games have only ever gestured towards,” and it rallied every ounce of the Apple II to do it.

Ottime idee a suo tempo, che hanno dato avvio a un sottogenere a sé (cinematic platformer) e ispirato platformer 3D come Tomb Raider.
Particolare riferimento a:
"shadow man" che, seppur con azioni scriptate, fa da temporanea semplice nemesi del giocatore e cerca di ostacolarne in modi inattesi l'avanzamento;
animazioni notevolmente fluide, realizzate attraverso il rotoscoping (cosa che restituisce anche un inusuale senso di realismo);
il level design, in relazione ai movimenti eseguibili dal personaggio e al danno da caduta (realizzando dunque un vero e proprio puzzle platformer);
emergenza di uno stile di gioco più cauto rispetto ad altri platformer contemporanei e precedenti, nel rispetto della necessità di sopravvivere;
un sistema di combattimento corpo a corpo, per quanto semplice (basato solo su parate e stoccate).

Vista la natura del gioco e la sua collocazione storica, ci tengo particolarmente a tenere in considerazione i grossi limiti tecnici imposti da Apple II (su cui è stato inizialmente realizzato e lanciato).

La versione SNES è quella più corposa e complessa, godendo anche di fondali ottimamente realizzati e un comparto grafico più moderno. Tuttavia, differisce fin troppo dalla versione originale: livelli molto più lunghi, aree totalmente nuove, veri e propri boss (anche originali nel design) oltre Jafaar. Vale quindi la pena provare la versione Amiga o Apple II prima di avvicinarsi alla versione per SNES.

(a bit of background: I'd seen my friend play this when I was a kid, but didn't really know much about it until I picked it up recently)

I find it pretty amusing that when I played Deep Space Nine: The Crossroads of Time recently, my first thought was "what kind of Prince of Persia-inspired game would control like ass and throw tons of timed missions at you?" And I guess now that I've played this, I know the answer to that question is Prince of Persia. Because this does control like ass, and the entire game is a timed mission. The fact that the timer is actually very unforgiving and you can save and load your progress means that you're encouraged to repeatedly savescum, playing the same stage again and again until you get a speedrun-worthy time.

There is also plenty this game gets right. The minimalist approach to the graphics and the music is very memorable; nothing is wasted, and every graphical detail and short musical jingle means something. The rotoscoping is impeccably done, ensuring that the game looks silky smooth (even if the controls don't always feel that way). The sword duels are a particular highlight!

I highly respect what this game did especially for its time; it's probably the best game I am totally okay with not returning to.