Category: platformer

Prince of Persia

Game Description

Prince of Persia is a fantasy cinematic platformer designed and implemented by Jordan Mechner for the Apple II and published by Broderbund in 1989. Players control an unnamed protagonist who must journey through a series of dungeons to defeat the Grand Vizier Jaffar and save an imprisoned princess.

Prince of Persia, like Karateka, Mechner’s first game, relied on rotoscoping for fluid and realistic animation. Mechner used videos of his brother doing acrobatic stunts in white clothes as a reference for the characters’ movements, as well as swashbuckler films like The Adventures of Robin Hood, for this process.

The game received critical acclaim, but it was not an immediate commercial success due to its release at the tail end of the Apple II’s usefulness. It sold a lot of copies because it was ported to so many different platforms. It is thought to be the first cinematic platformer, and it influenced many games in this subgenre, including Another World. Its success spawned two sequels, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame and Prince of Persia 3D, as well as two reboots of the series, the first in 2003 with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which spawned three sequels of its own, and the second in 2008 with the identically titled Prince of Persia.

[title] Gameplay

The player’s main goal is to guide the unnamed protagonist out of dungeons and into a tower before time runs out. This cannot be accomplished without avoiding traps and combating hostile swordsmen. There are twelve levels in Prince of Persia (though some console versions have more). However, after level 2, a game session can be saved and resumed at a later time.

The player’s health is indicated by a series of small red triangles. The player begins with three coins. The player loses one of these indicators every time the protagonist is injured (cut by a sword, falls from two floors of heights, or is hit by a falling rock). There are small jars filled with potions of various colors and sizes. One health indicator is restored by the red potions scattered throughout Prince of Persia. The blue potions are poisonous and deal one life indicator of damage. There are also large jars of red potion, which increases the maximum number of health indicators by one, and large jars of green potion, which grants the ability to hover for a short time. The protagonist dies if the player’s health reaches zero. As a result, Prince of Persia is restarted from the beginning of the stage where the protagonist died, but the timer does not reset to that point, resulting in a time penalty. There is no counter for the number of lives; but if time runs out, the princess will be gone and Prince of Persia will be over, subject to variations per console versions:

• The DOS version allows the player already in the very late part of Level 12 to continue after time is out with no extra life, so:

1. Restarting the level by pressing appropriate buttons is not death, thus not failing Prince of Persia yet.
2. Any player’s death, including having killed Jaffar and then falling from excessive floors of heights, also fails Prince of Persia in which case the Princess is also gone.
3. Only defeating Jaffar and exiting Level 12 alive will still save the Princess, with a negative time score in the hall of fame.

• The Macintosh port will not give the player a game over once they reach the final area of Level 12 (stored in data as Level 13), provided they make it there on time. The player must cross the magic bridge and make a screen transition to a room with falling tiles to be ‘safe’; once there, they will always be allowed to continue, regardless of deaths or time expiration. Running out of time at any point before the screen transition, including the bridge, will result in a game over as usual.
• The Super NES remake allows the players to save themselves after time is out, to get Prince of Persia over at the end without the princess saved.

Spike traps, deep pits (three or more levels deep), and guillotines are the three types of traps that the player must avoid. The protagonist dies instantly if he or she is caught or falls into one of the traps. There are also gates that can be raised for a short time by having the protagonist stand on the activation trigger. To avoid locking triggers, the player must pass through the gates while they are still open. There are sometimes multiple traps between an unlock trigger and a gate.

Another impediment is hostile swordsmen (Jaffar and his guards). In the first stage, the player obtains a sword, which they can use to fight these enemies. Advance, back off, slash, parry, or a combined parry-then-slash attack are the protagonist’s sword maneuvers. Enemy swordsmen have a health indicator that is similar to the protagonists. To kill them, slash them until their health indicator is depleted or push them into traps while fighting.

In the third stage, a skeletal swordsman comes to life and fights the protagonist. The skeleton cannot be killed with the sword, but it can be defeated by dropping it into one of the pits.

A magic mirror, which appears in stage four and serves as a plot device, is a one-of-a-kind trap that is followed by an ominous leitmotif. The protagonist is forced to jump through the mirror, and his doppelganger emerges from the other side, reducing the protagonist’s health to one. Later, this apparition hinders the protagonist by stealing a potion and throwing him into a dungeon. The protagonist is unable to kill this apparition because they share a life; any harm is done to one also harms the other. As a result, the protagonist must unite with his doppelganger.

In stage eight, the protagonist becomes trapped behind a gate and is unable to escape. At this point, the Princess sends a white mouse to reopen the gate, allowing him to advance to the next level.

In stage twelve, the protagonist is confronted by his shadow doppelgänger. After they’ve merged, the player can run across an invisible bridge to a new area where they’ll face Jaffar (once the final checkpoint is reached, the player will no longer get a game over screen even if time runs out, except if the player dies after the timeout). Jaffar’s spell is broken once he is defeated, and the Princess can be saved. Furthermore, the in-game timer is stopped at the moment Jaffar dies, and the time remaining is displayed on the high scores.

Download [title]

We might have the game available for more than one platform. Prince of Persia is currently available on these platforms:

DOS (1989)

How to play on Windows

1. Click on the download button. It should redirect you to your download (a .rar file). Make sure you download the file properly and that your internet does not disconnect while downloading.
2. Download the software DOSBox and put a shortcut for DOSBox on your desktop.
3. Extract the “Prince of Persia” folder to your desktop.
4. Open the “Prince of Persia” folder and then open the “Game Files” folder.
5. Find the file called “PRINCE”, and drag it on top of the DOSBox icon which you have on your desktop. Prince of Persia should now launch in DOSBox.
6. Enjoy Prince of Persia!

[title] Screenshots

DOS

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