Developer: Bits Laboratory
Publisher: Sega
Year: 1992
In May of 1985 Jordan Mechner was staring down the barrel of the rest of his life. About to graduate from Yale at the edge of 21 years old, his first game, Karateka, had just hit the top of Billboard’s software charts. He received his first royalty cheque for the game soon after: $2,117.00.
But he was struggling. Mechner wanted to be a filmmaker, and shared what seemed to be a relatively common view that the games industry’s days were numbered. On the flip side, he was looking for a way to escape the post-University aimlessness he was feeling, and had Karateka’s publisher, Broderbund, knocking on the door for his second game.
By August, Jordan was in the Readers’ Digest parking lot filming his brother David on a borrowed video camera in preparation to animate the titular Prince of Persia.
According to Mechner’s book the game wasn’t super successful in the US right away, but was winning loads of awards in Europe and Japan. And while there were always plans for Prince of Persia to be ported to most major computer platforms, its popularity in Japan in particular lead directly to the game hitting most game consoles of the day. The SNES, Master System, NES, Game Boy, Genesis, TurboGrafx CD-ROM, and Sega CD all had ports. Many of them done by Japanese companies.
The Prince’s influence in France is obvious as well, especially in games like Out of This World and Flashback from Delphine Software. In fact, Jordan Mechner recounts a story in The Making of Prince of Persia where Out of This World creator Eric Chahi told him that he left Delphine over Flashback, stating it was such a rip off of Prince of Persia that it went against his personal ethics. Chahi would go on to develop Heart of Darkness, another game that was clearly inspired by Prince of Persia.
Normally when both a Genesis cartridge and Sega CD version of game exists, you kind of assume the latter is just an enhanced version of the former, usually with a few extra effects and redbook audio. Not the case with Prince of Persia. The Sega CD version was ported by Bits Laboratory, and is not at all the same version of the game released by Tengen and developed by Domark on cartridge.
Unfortunately, it’s also not all that great. It’s a serviceable version of the classic computer game – as were most console ports – but it’s nothing special. Especially not in the face of the previously-released SNES conversion by the almighty Konami. All the Sega CD version has going for it is the redbook audio.
Even the cutscenes, which were enhanced to take advantage of the CD format, are ruined by absolutely awful voice acting. You do, however, get a great image of a blood-covered Prince near the end of the game.
Still, Prince of Persia is a bonafide classic, so even a mediocre port is usually worth playing. Playing the Sega CD game now I’m struck by just how deliberate all of your actions have to be while navigating each new challenge. This is nothing new. Prince of Persia has always been this way, but it’s still a bit off-putting.
Of course, Mechner would return to the franchise he created years later. After Broderbund went out of business, Ubisoft ended up with the license to the franchise (a French company, of course), but Jordan Mechner still owned the rights. Jordan teamed up with Ubisoft Montreal to write and design the fantastic Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, released in 2003.
Seven years later, Mechner teamed up with producer Jerry Bruckheimer to release a film adaptation of the game. Not surprising, considering he’d been stepping in and out of the film business since he first graduated from Yale.
