Amiga: Prince of Persia (1989)

My last post has received lots of favorable feedback for Brøderbund the game designer and publisher of many fantastic games. Today, I want to present you another landmark in computer gaming:


Prince of Persia

Now this classic was truly fascinating from the very beginning on. I got sucked into the story and atmosphere almost instantly after seeing the intro and hearing the oriental theme.

It all happens in ancient Persia. While the Sultan is trying to expand his empire on a campaign, the evil Grand Vizier Jaffar seizes power. But before he can come to the throne, he needs to get rid of the princess. You can tell how it goes on from here. Jaffar locks the princess in a tower and throws her lover into the palace dungeon, surrounded by deadly obstacles. 

You have one hour to save the life of your love or else she must marry the Grand Vizier or die!

As you can see in the animation above, this game offered wonderful character animations for its time. Very smooth movements give you the impression of being in the middle of this dungeon. Despite that, the controls are kind of wobbly sometimes. It can be hard to tell the right time to jump, which regularly results into fatal falls. At least you will be "rewarded" with blood and nice sound effects!

Nevertheless, Prince of Persia is an absolute must have for any Amiga or emulator. Originally released for the Apple II system, there are ports available for mostly all other classic platforms: Amstrad, Gameboy, NES, SNES, Atari ST, Mega Drive, MS-DOS, Xbox 360 and even the iPhone OS.

In recent years Ubisoft has developed a new game: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Disney released a movie with the same name.