Prince of Persia
Brøderbund released Prince of Persia for IBM PC MS-DOS 2.11 in March of 1990. Prince of Persia is a cinematic puzzle-platform game notable for the fluidity of its rotoscoped sprite animations, digitized sound effects and precise platforming and dueling controls.
The gameplay and presentation of Prince of Persia was influenced by Karateka of 1984 and would influence Another World of 1991.
The original Prince of Persia was designed, drawn and programmed by Jordan Mechner in 6502 assembly and released on the Apple 2 in 1989.
In Prince of Persia players control an unnamed hero tasked with saving an imprisoned princess by defeating the tyrannical Grand Vizier, Jaffar. Players explore a time-limited dungeon while dueling Jaffar's minions and negotiating obstacles such as spikes, gates and collapsing floors. Prince of Persia dungeons are presented in side-elevation with obliquely-projected platforms, which adds a degree of scene-depth.
The Prince of Persia hero can walk or run left and right, take a single step, duck, jump directly upwards and diagonally upwards, climb up onto ledges, hang from ledges, climb down from ledges, drop down from ledges and pick up objects. In sword-fighting aka dueling mode, the hero can sheathe and unsheathe his sword, strike, block and advance or retreat.
Each step, jump and attack in Prince of Persia is measurable and accompanied by a discrete sound effect.
In Prince of Persia no action is immediately executed in response to player-input: every input triggers an articulated set of animation frames that place players into micro-wait states. For example, the simple act of turning around to face the opposite direction is animated; that is, it takes time. And the time turning around takes is based on momentum, which is realistic.
Prince of Persia consists of 12 levels and approximately 250 unique screens. Prince of Persia is a flip-screen game that features no screen-scrolling.
PC Prince of Persia was programmed by Lance Groody.
PC Prince of Persia displays in 2-color Hercules, 4-color CGA, 16-color EGA or TGA and 256-color VGA/MCGA 320x200.
PC Prince of Persia sound effects support PC Internal Speaker, AdLib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Pro Audio Spectrum, PS/1 (audio/games) Option Card, Roland MT-32, Roland CM-32, Roland LAPC-I, Tandy Sound and Disney Sound Source. PC Prince of Persia also employs digitized sound effects on Tandy 1000 SL and TL computers.
PC Prince of Persia music supports PC Internal Speaker, AdLib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Pro Audio Spectrum, PS/1 (audio/games) Option Card, Roland MT-32, Roland CM-32, Roland LAPC-I and Tandy 3-voice.
PC Prince of Persia supports keyboard or analog joystick control.
PC Prince of Persia was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB DD diskette or 2x 5.25" 360kB floppy disks and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Broderbund's Hard Disk Install Program. The install size is 660 kbytes and consists of 30 files.
Prince of Persia Amiga 1990
Brøderbund released Prince of Persia for the Amiga in 1990. Amiga Prince of Persia was programmed by Dan Gorlin of Choplifter fame. Amiga Prince of Persia displays in 16-from-4096 color 320x200.
Amiga Prince of Persia consists of 13 stages and one password stage. The stages are up to 4,000 pixels in width and 1,300 pixels in height.
Prince of Persia Atari ST 1990
Brøderbund released Prince of Persia for the Atari ST in 1990. Atari ST Prince of Peraia was programmed by Jean-Claude Lévy. ST Prince of Persia displays in 16-from-512 color 320x200.
Prince of Persia 2 PC DOS 1993
Brøderbund released Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame for IBM PC MS-DOS 3.1 in May of 1993. Somewhat suprisingly, there is no Amiga version of Prince of Persia 2.
Prince of Persia 2 added the ability to crawl as well as magical abilities such as Shadow Man and Fireball. The time limit of Prince of Persia 2 is 75 minutes.
PC DOS Prince of Persia 2 was distributed on 4x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Broderbund Software's Install Program. The install size is 6.5 megs and consists of 55 files.
PC DOS Prince of Persia 2 requires an i80286 10 MHz CPU and can address up to 2 megs of EMS memory.
PC DOS Prince of Persia 2 controls support keyboard and joystick and keyboard.
PC DOS Prince of Persia 2 displays in 256-color VGA 320x200. However, the active drawspace is only 320x192 and in-play color is limited. In 1993 the Amiga 500 of 1987 could have displayed PoP2 in 32-color 320x256 with parallax scrolling and much smoother sky gradients. PC DOS PoP2 features non-smooth 4-player parallax in its titlescreen only whereas the Amiga 500 was displaying in-game 13-layer parallax at 50 FPS in 1989.
PC DOS Prince of Persia 2 digital audio supports PC Internal Speaker, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Pro Audio Spectrum, IBM PS/1, Tandy Sound, Disney Sound Source, AdLib and Roland MT-32, Roland LAPC-I and Roland CM-32L.
PC DOS Prince of Persia 2 music supports AdLib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Pro Audio Spectrum, IBM PS/1, Tandy Sound, AdLib, General MIDI and Roland MT-32, Roland LAPC-I and Roland CM-32L.
PC DOS Prince of Persia 2 was conceived by Jordan Mechner, lead-programmed by Lance Groody and composed by Jonelle Adkisson.
Indexes:
- History of Computer Platform Games (Chronological platform game coverage)
- Amiga Games Reviews (Index to all Amiga game reviews)
- Computer Game Reviews (Index to all computer game reviews)
- The First REAL Amiga Game
- Best Amiga Games
- History of Computer Games 1976-2024 (Master Index)
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