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You shouldn't really steal from a poor, defenseless skeleton... -------------------- Octotiggy on Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/octotiggy/profile Octotiggy on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Octotiggy Octotiggy on Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/Octotiggy -------------------- Prince of Persia is a 1989 fantasy cinematic platformer originally developed and published by Brøderbund and designed by Jordan Mechner for the Apple II. In the game, players control an unnamed protagonist who must venture through a series of dungeons to defeat the Grand Vizier Jaffar and save an imprisoned princess. Much like Karateka, Mechner's first game, Prince of Persia used rotoscoping for its fluid and realistic animation. For this process, Mechner used as reference for the characters' movements videos of his brother doing acrobatic stunts in white clothes and swashbuckler films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood. The game was critically acclaimed and, while not an immediate commercial success, sold many copies as it was ported to a wide range of platforms after the original Apple II release. It is believed to have been the first cinematic platformer and inspired many following games in this subgenre, such as Another World. Its success led to the release of two sequels, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame and Prince of Persia 3D, and two reboots of the series, first in 2003 with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which lead to two sequels of its own, and then again in 2008 with the identically-titled Prince of Persia. The main objective of the player is to lead the nameless protagonist out of a dungeons and into a tower before time runs out. This cannot be done without bypassing traps and fighting hostile swordsmen. The game consists of twelve levels (though some console versions have more). However, a game session may be saved and resumed at a later time only after level 3. The player has a health indicator that consists of a series of small red triangles. The player starts with three. Each time the protagonist is damaged (cut by sword, fallen from two floors of heights or hit by a falling rock), the player loses one of these indicators. There are small jars of red potion scattered throughout the game that restore one health indicator. There are also large jars of red potion that increase the maximum number of health indicators by one. If the player's health is reduced to zero, the protagonist dies. Subsequently, the game is restarted from the beginning of the stage in which the protagonist died but the timer will not reset to that point, effectively constituting a time penalty. There is no counter for the number of lives; but if time runs out, the princess will die and the game will be over. There are three types of traps that the player must bypass: Spike traps, deep pits (three or more levels deep) and guillotines. Getting caught or falling into each results in the instant death of the protagonist. In addition, there are gates that can be raised for a short period of time by having the protagonist stand on the activation trigger. The player must pass through the gates while they are open, avoiding locking triggers. Sometimes, there are various traps between an unlock trigger and a gate. Charles Ardai of Computer Gaming World stated that the game package's claim that it "breaks new ground with animation so uncannily human it must be seen to be believed" was true. He wrote that Prince of Persia "succeeds at being more than a running-jumping game (in other words, a gussied-up Nintendo game)" because it "captures the feel of those great old adventure films", citing Thief of Baghdad, Frankenstein and Dracula. Ardai concluded that it was "a tremendous achievement" in gaming comparable to that of Star Wars in film. In 1991, the game was ranked the 12th best Amiga game of all time by Amiga Power. Prince of Persia would go on to influence cinematic platformers such as Flashback as well as action-adventure games such as Tomb Raider, which used a similar control scheme. Wikipedia contributors. Prince of Persia (1989 video game). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. March 3, 2016, 13:49 UTC. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prince_of_Persia_(1989_video_game)&oldid=708076324.