Apple II Game Demonstration Series - Prince of Persia

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Nerdly Pleasures (Great Hierophant)

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Published on October 25, 2020 7:13:25 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC3QicJMQlo

Game:

Prince of Persia (1989)

Duration: 7:12

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Here we have Jordan Mechner's second and final game published for the Apple II systems, Prince of Persia. Mechner began developing Prince of Persia for the Apple II when the platform was almost a decade old. The game pushes the limits of what an 8-bit Apple //e. It employs double high resolution graphics for the opening titles and requires an Apple //e with an extended 80-column installed, which gives the system128KiB of RAM, or an Apple //c or //gs.

The player character and the enemies are rotoscoped like in Karateka, but Mechner improves on his previous game in many, many ways. The screens have multiple heights and the levels have multiple floors. The player character can change direction, run naturally, jump and climb onto ledges, perform running or standing jumps and walk to the edges of a platform. The torches, traps and false floors are animated at the cost of some slowdown. The story is essentially Karateka transposed to the Arabian Nights, but is told in a more dramatic fashion.

As Mechner had said, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw0VfmXKq54, the Apple II version was not a great success as the platform was dying when he released the game in 1989. The ports saved the game, and the game was very widely ported in the early 1990s.

The game can last up to one hour, the time limit you have to complete twelve levels and rescue the princess. As this is a demonstration I have not played the full hour.

Same hardware and capture setup as with the previous videos. It appears that double high resolution graphics are a little shifted relative to high resolution graphics, but that is interplay between the adapter and the system.

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