The Rise and Fall of Prince of Persia -Part 1

Well, hello there, dear reader! Today I am going to take a look at a series which is very close to my heart, and that is, as the title states, Prince of Persia.

Before I start rambling, I want to state that this article would not have existed without me going out and playing Assassin's Creed Origins (mainly because of the vast amounts of sand), which I could only afford thanks to the support of this community. Thank you very much, fellow steemians!

For the sake of clarity and size of posts, I will divide the series into three eras, which I will present on different days: the Original Trilogy, the Renaissance and the Modern Era.

Let's not waste any more precious time and dive right into it!

The Original Trilogy

The series began in 1989 with a game simply titled Prince of Persia, a cinematic platformer. The game was the created of Jordan Mechner, after the success of his previous game, Karateka, and published by Broderbund. The game drew heavy inspiration from the Arabian Nights stories, exuding a very oriental fairy tale-like atmosphere, which made it stand out. Some distinguishing features of the game were the rotoscoped animations, a technique which requires an artist to draw over motion picture footage in order to obtain realistic results. The model for rotoscoping the prince in the game was Mechner's brother, which is a really interesting nugget of trivia, in my books. Another interesting feature is the time limit, which ties into the story: the evil vizier gave an ultimatum to the sultan's daughter to marry him and gives her one hour to decide whether to accept his proposal or die. The prince is thrown in the dungeons to prevent him from saving his beloved, and he must escape and fight the vizier in order to make things right. It is the classic video game story of saving the princess, but if it ain't broke don't fix it, right?

The sequel, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, came after four years, in 1993, still in the cinematic platformer genre, with most gameplay being a more polished version of the first outing, which can only be a positive. The story follows the same prince, this time being exiled because the vizier took his appearance by using magic and denounced him as a criminal. The protagonist is forced to run for his life and becomes a stowaway on a ship which was just leaving the port when he reached it. He eventually finds himself on a mysterious island, and past this point I actually do not know how the plot continues, as I did not finish it, but I recommend playing it nonetheless. One of these days I really need to get back to this game.

The third game arrived in 1999, ingeniously called Prince of Persia 3D, this time made by Red Orb Entertainment. It was a 3D (what a shock) spin on the same formula, but, the charm was lost in translation. Gone were the bidimensional sprites and levels. They actually tried to copy Tomb Raider, tank controls and the style of the platforming (and, fun fact, I absolutely despise tank controls, but they are the relics of a bygone era, so, at least they do not pop up in today's games), but implementing a melee combat system which leaves you completely vulnerable if you are fighting more than one person. I have only played the first few levels of this game, so, I know bugger all about the story. If you are planning to play through the series , I recommend forgetting about this one ever existing. Also, for some reason, this game has quite a few bugs and exploits, like sometimes being able to jump through certain walls.

Well, that was it for the Original Trilogy. It started with a bang, continued with a second, less mind blowing bang and finished with a fizzle.

Seeing as these games are abandonware, you can download them freely, so here goes:
-Prince of Persia
-Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame
-Prince of Persia 3D

Links to the other parts of this retrospective:
-Part 2: The Renaissance
-Part 3: The Modern Era

Sources: the cover image comes from mobygames.com, the Prince of Persia (1989) image comes from techcrunch.com, the Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame image comes from myabandonware.com, the Prince of Persia 3D image comes from gamershell.com

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