The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993

by Jordan Mechner

  Getting through a dungeon in Prince of Persia doesn’t give that satisfying feeling of getting closer to the goal. Partly because it all looks pretty much the same. That, I can fix.

  But there’s another key element in story stucture that also applies to games, and is missing from this one: The Opponent. Someone competing for the same goal as the hero, or trying to stop him from attaining it. The more human, the better. (The days of Asteroids and Pinball are over.)

  In this case (we’re short on time, so let’s use the opponent we’ve already got), it’s Shadow Man.

  Some games boast a whole series of different opponents. (According to Truby, this is characteristic of Myth, and it weakens the story.) We’ll make the shadow man your opponent for the entire game. You’re competing for hit points. Each blow you deal him weakens him. Each power dot you eat makes you stronger. But if he gets there first and he eats it, he gets stronger. So when you face each other with crossed swords, the balance of power is not predetermined (as in Karateka), but is the result of your own actions thus far in the game.

  It links the combat with the running-around. It’s brilliant. I love it!

  (Forget the boring damn keys.)

  November 14, 1988

  Spent the morning talking to Eric about the game. Conclusion: My next step should be to implement the fighting. Until I do, it’s too difficult to imagine in the abstract what the game will feel like to play.

  November 17, 1988

  Showed POP to the Tribunal – Gary, Gene, Brian, Sophie K. (of Marketing), and Ann Kronen.

  Ann and Sophie, who hadn’t seen it before, gasped over the animation. Gene grudgingly admitted it might be pretty good, “if it ever becomes a game.” Gary liked the puzzle angle, didn’t mind the two disks, liked the level editor, didn’t think it needed all that much combat, thought it had big conversion and coin-op potential and I shouldn’t limit it on account of the Apple II’s shortcomings.

  I’ve got to learn to get more pumped up for these things. I was so blasé, I really brought the energy down in the room. I think they’d have been more excited if I hadn’t been there to demo it.

  November 18, 1988

  A glorious day. Freezing cold, but maybe that was part of it. The air was so clean, the sky so blue; I felt happy for no reason at all. I drove 80 on the freeway blasting Talking Heads all the way home.

  Today definitely marked the close of a week of anguish over my game. It’s gonna be great. I put in a set of chomping jaws that added some much-needed real-time danger to the action. That was easy. The big step will be the swordfighting with the guards, but it’ll be worth it.

  If only the Apple II weren’t a dying format. Better get cracking pronto on the MS-DOS conversion.

  October royalty check for Karateka was $166.

  November 20, 1988

  Worked all day again, made great strides. I put in a strength meter and made it work. I also put in footsteps, and improved the chomping jaws.

  But the real breakthrough this week was invisible: I moved a bunch of stuff around so the main game code can use the auxiliary language card. Basically, I’ve just freed up an extra 12K. That gives me some breathing room I’ll sorely need if I’m going to put in all this swordfighting.

  It was a good weekend.

  November 21, 1988

  Put in burning torches, and bricks in the background. It’s totally changed the look of the game. Robert was impressed.

  I’m very happy with how things are going. With combat, this will be one of the greatest games of all time.

  December 1, 1988

  I’ve been thinking more and more that I need some kind of major life change. I’ve never felt so restless. Maybe after POP ships I should enroll in the directing program at AFI, or USC.

  December 2, 1988

  Doug wandered into my office today and I gave him the joystick to play with. He was impressed. When he left he said: “I feel like I’ve had an adventure.” I told him I’d have a version in a couple of months that would really be playable. He said: “Seems to me it’s pretty close.”

  Also spent a couple of hours with Lauren E., and some good ideas came out of that.

  I realized that the 50-level, Lode Runner approach is all wrong. What made Karateka so compelling is that it’s easy. You boot it up and pick up the joystick and it’s obvious what you have to do. You’re there, the guard’s there, he’s in your way. The goal – the bad guy and the princess – is somewhere off to your right, and every step brings you closer. It’s mindless, repetitive – and addictive.

  Prince of Persia, with all its elaborate complexity, stretches that thread past the breaking point. The world is so big that the player is lost and confused.

  So here’s the new idea: Ten levels. Easy levels. About the same difficulty and amount of game play as Karateka. You start in the dungeon; you end with the princess.

  But that’s not the end. The princess gets taken away from you again and you have to go through another, more challenging castle — four castles in all, ten levels each — to win the game and get her for good. Castle four is where we’ll put the really tough levels – for fanatics only, like the last 50 levels of Lode Runner.

  At the beginning of the game, story is everything. By the end, it’s practically nothing. The experience distills into pure game play.

  So there it is: Slap a story frame on it. Add combat. Design ten easy levels. That’s Prince of Persia. The rest is a bonus.

  I’m starting to think there’s no reason to include the level editor with the disk. In a way, it cheapens it.

  The real trick will be designing those first ten levels. Finding the right balance of action, strategy, and adventure. That will make the difference between an OK game and a great one. I could slap together ten levels in a day… but it should take weeks. Weeks of watching beginners play, and revising, and finding new beginners to test it out on.

  But first: Combat.

  December 3, 1988

  Rented a bunch of swashbuckling movies and took them to Robert’s new apartment to study the swashbuckling. Of course we ended up watching Captain Blood straight through. We were both amazed by how good it was. I can’t remember when I’ve seen a movie with such a well-constructed plot. Why don’t they write screenplays like that any more?

  Then we spent a couple of hours at Broderbund, working out the logic and joystick interface for the swordfighting in POP. This must be the tenth time I’ve torn it all down and come up with a new way to do it. I hope it’ll be the last.

  December 5, 1988

  Doug told Tomi my game is going to be a smash hit.

  Spent much of today on hands and knees, poring with Eric over three dozen snapshots spread out on the office floor, trying to deconstruct Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn’s climactic duel in Robin Hood. We really busted our brains.

  As a result, my conception now is totally different from what it was yesterday, or Sunday. It’ll all be worth it. This is going to be the greatest game of all time.

  I just got off the phone (at 1 a.m.) with Lawrence Payne of Compu-Tech Systems in London, who make the digitizer that so inconveniently stopped working a few months ago. It’s 9 a.m. in London. He gave me his home number so Russ and I can call him tomorrow morning and he can help us try to fix it.

  But really, what I need to do is rent a video camera and find two people to re-enact the moves of Guy of Gisbourne and Robin of Locksley for digital posterity. I want to have it up on the screen now. When I’m pumped up like this, I can hardly sleep at night.

  December 8, 1988

  Russ and I “fixed” the digitizer (it was in the wrong slot) and changed my life. In the past week, swordfighting has gone from a vague notion of something I’d have to put in the game someday, to reality. The little guy now thrusts and lunges. Everyone who�
��s seen it is thrilled. The amount of painstaking work still ahead of me is too huge to contemplate, but it’s paying off more dramatically than anything I’ve done in months. This is going to be a good game.

  December 15, 1988

  I came up with an idea for Robert’s game. The goal is to rescue people who are trapped in the building; you disinfect the rooms and make it safe for them to escape.

  Robert, for his part, came up with a good idea for me – solid blocks to fill up the empty spaces. It’s totally changed the look of the game. Now, it really feels like a dungeon.

  January 3, 1989

  Been playing Super Mario 2. First time in ages I’ve been addicted to an arcade game. Several points worth noting:

  It took me hours of play to get through the first area; but having done it once, I can now zip through it reliably in minutes.

  I’m building up a repertoire of skills.

  There are certain things that it pays to do in the first area – like boost your life meter from 2 to 3 to 4, and collect an extra life – but you can also keep playing forever in the same area, if you like, without achieving anything.

  New Year’s Resolution: Finish Prince of Persia. (Ship by June 30, 1989.)

  January 17, 1989

  Been working hard on POP (48 hours last week) and it’s really looking good. The swordfighting is starting to take shape, and it not only looks terrific, it’s actually fun. It blows Karateka out of the water. It’ll become the centerpiece of the entire game. Tomi was right all along. (“Combat! Combat! Combat!”)

  January 30, 1989

  [In L.A.] Lunch with Larry Turman. He was in a good mood, but it sounds like being a film producer has been frustrating for him lately. He asked me if I was still with Leading Artists. I wonder if they’ve dumped me and I just don’t know it?

  Dinner with Virginia. “You’ve changed!” she said immediately. “It’s like you’ve grown up!”

  I mentioned that Leading Artists hasn’t contacted me about renewing our representation agreement. She said that’s probably their way of tactfully waiting to see if I write anything new.

  She still loves Birthstone. “Are you kidding?” she said. “It was, what, two years ago? And I still remember the plot in, like, this incredible detail. It’s a great script. I can’t believe it hasn’t gotten made.”

  February 6, 1989

  Worked from home today. I did a lot of work, actually. I finished the CWP (“Creative Work Plan”) and documentation they’ve been asking for, and I think I finally licked the problem of the prologue. I described it to Tomi over the phone and she loved it.

  Also, I wrote up a schedule that has me giving a preliminary playable version to QA on April 15. The game should be done around Memorial Day – in time for CES – and ship shortly thereafter.

  Forget screenwriting. This is my project. For the next four months, I’m going to focus on POP full time.

  Home Stretch

  February 7, 1989

  Brian was thrilled with the CWP. He couldn’t believe that I’d done it and now he doesn’t have to. “I want you to know,” he said, “that this is absolutely unprecedented.”

  The plan: Beta version by April 15. Show it at CES the first week in June. Ship by June 30.

  It’ll sell for $35-40 and be a one-disk product. Brian didn’t put up a struggle when I told him I was ditching the level editor. He agreed, and even persuaded me to limit the game to one scenario rather than four. “People expect to get a certain amount of value for their money,” he said. “Why give them more?”

  Reducing it to one castle will save me weeks of work – at least. The more I think about it, the more I like it. I’d been worried that including really hard puzzles in the basic game would render it unwinnable for the majority of players. But, as Brian pointed out, if players get frustrated they can always call Tech Support for hints.

  February 13, 1989

  Spent the day fine-tuning the swordfighting. It’s tons better now. I’ve simplified the controls so blocking is now automatic with retreating, rather than a separate action. It’s finally starting to get that back-and-forth feeling of a real Hollywood sword fight. It’s gonna be great.

  February 16, 1989

  A lot of heavy work, most of it invisible, but which will make it much easier for me to implement the enemy guards in their flowing robes and turbans.

  February 21, 1989

  Worked all day long finding and fixing bugs in the collision detection. It was like swatting flies.

  Came up with a bunch of really slick ideas for the shadow man and how to use him.

  February 22, 1989

  Another productive day. Got rid of a couple of nasty collision detection bugs that had the characters occasionally falling through solid blocks (plenty more where those came from), and simplified the controls so that you no longer need to hold the button down to climb up onto a ledge. It’s a big improvement – it makes the controls much less daunting at first.

  February 28, 1989

  Tomi may move to Paris to run Broderbund France. Her maybe-future colleagues, Dominique and Veronique (whom she calls “the puppies”) stopped by this morning and I gave them a demo of POP. They flipped. They love it. They want to sell it in France. I told them how valuable Tomi’s input has been on the game design (can’t hurt, if she’s going to be their boss).

  In the afternoon, I demoed the game for Gary and Dianne Drosnes, who is in charge of acquisitions and licensing.

  March 3, 1989

  Doug told Tomi that POP is the only product Broderbund has in the works that he thinks will be a hit. “It’s been four years since we had a hit,” he said.

  Joe from Tech Support cornered me and talked for ten minutes about how my game is “setting a new standard.”

  All I have to do is finish it.

  March 20, 1989

  I called up Avril Harrison, highly recommended graphic artist, to ask if she could do a title screen for POP. She’ll come by tomorrow morning to see the game and show me her samples. She charges $30 an hour.

  Last night I went to Tower Records and bought a bunch of the stuff George’s friend Erik recommended – Lloyd Cole, Grace Jones, Tom Waits. Blew $100 in thirty minutes.

  Avril Harrison is a bargain.

  Started working on the title and demo sequence for POP… double hi-res unpack routines… according to schedule. I’m a little nervous to be forging ahead like this, considering the millions of bugs I’m leaving behind (for now), but if I don’t plunge into it, it’ll never get done.

  March 21, 1989

  Hired the lovely and talented Avril Harrison to do a IIGS title screen for POP. She’s Scottish. And married.

  The title and demo sequence is taking shape. It’s a lot of logistical hassles with disk access and memory management. Robert lent me his double hi-res unpack routines. Another few days and all the major pieces will be in place.

  I’m obsessed with this Tom Waits album (Big Time).

  March 23, 1989

  Sophie K. is going to be my marketing manager. That sucks. I want it to be Latricia.

  March 24, 1989

  All day alone at the office. The game now fits on a single two-sided disk and seems to be working pretty well. Now I’m home on my Mac, working on the story line and opening sequence.

  The game is definitely entering a new phase. The serene, solitary part of it (two and a half years) is ending and all kinds of other people are getting into the act. My job now is not just trying to make a fun game, but getting people excited about it, and, to a degree, orchestrating their efforts, without stepping on their toes or impinging on their territory. The world has left me alone for two and a half years, and now it’s bursting in.

  I’m not ready. There’s so much work still to do.


  March 25, 1989

  Doug told Tomi he’ll talk to Latricia and discuss with her “which products are important and which she should be focusing her efforts on (!)”

  March 27, 1989

  Broderbund’s sales are way down. It’s an industry-wide slump. Nobody knows why it’s happening, or how long it will last.

  Doug is convinced Prince of Persia will be a major hit. He urged me to get going on the MS-DOS conversion immediately.

  Today I put in a self-running demo, and made the guards slightly less dumb, so they can pursue you onto the next screen.

  I’ll be so depressed if this game isn’t a hit. Doug’s right: unless there’s an MS-DOS version out pretty close on the heels of the Apple version, it’ll be another Wings of Fury. “Huh,” the dealers will say. “I thought this one was gonna be really hot – but look, it’s not selling all that well.”

  I’ve gotta find an MS-DOS programmer – soon. I’ll call Doug Greene tomorrow. Again.

  March 28, 1989

  Stayed at the office till 7:30, then came back after dinner and worked on Level 1 till midnight. I’m burned out.

  My most concrete achievement today was to print out the entire source code – all 1,000 pages of it.

  Doug Greene is reluctant to take on the MS-DOS port (despite my subtle, repeated mention of the words “BIG HIT” and “ROYALTY”), but he recommended his friend Jim St. Louis, an “old-time hacker” who’s worked for Atari and Lucasfilm.

  Avril gave me a picture. It’s really quite beautiful; it’s got that magical Arabian Nights storybook feel to it. Ed Badasov, Brian and Greg Hammond all flipped over it. It’ll lose a lot in the transition from super hi-res to double hi-res, but I can use the original in the MS-DOS and Amiga versions. It took her 29 hours: $1,015.

  Spend the next couple of weeks getting what I have cleaned up, fine-tuned, and bug-free, before I start adding new features (the opening sequence animation, the stair-climbing, the white mouse, etc.)