The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993

by Jordan Mechner

  My mind is spinning ahead to completion… packaging… conversions… sequels… It’s incredibly distracting.

  Focus. Finish.

  March 30, 1989

  Brian showed the game to the Star Chamber (aka Publishing Committee) – Gary, Bill, Harry, Ann Kronen, Ed Badasov, Richard Whittaker, Cathy, Dianne Drosnes, and Ed Auer (Doug, traveling in Japan, having already voted “yes”). He told me it “passed with flying colors.” So, green light to go ahead with packaging, scheduling, etc.

  Doug talked to Bill and Bill talked to Latricia about the marketing situation. Latricia said she just wants to give Sophie a chance to handle a new project. Doug said firmly: “This is not an appropriate project for that. We’re counting on this to be our next big hit. It’s the only product we have in development that’s going to be a hit. We want to give it the biggest push we can.” (I got all this second hand, of course.)

  So now Latricia’s going to oversee it and Sophie, basically, will do the gruntwork. Whew.

  They’re desperate for an MS-DOS version. Jim St. Louis wants to do it, with a friend of his, Josh Scholar. I just don’t know if these guys are technically up to par.

  April 2, 1989

  Tomi advised me not to sign a contract with anyone but Doug Greene. Let him subcontract to these other guys. If he balks at that, I should take that as a sign.

  I’m seeing them all tomorrow at Doug’s place, two hours north of Broderbund.

  April 3, 1989

  A gorgeous spring day. I drove like a maniac on narrow, winding country roads to Cazadero for the big meet with Doug Greene, Jim St. Louis, Josh Scholar, and Mike Larner.

  I showed them POP and we went for a walk around Doug’s property, had a beer and smoked a joint (probably grown by one of his neighbors), broke out the yellow pads and discussed the technical challenges of the MS-DOS conversion while Doug’s wife cooked dinner.

  After dinner Doug said he’d been chewing all day on the idea of subcontracting to the other guys and he just didn’t think he could do it. “See, if I took this on, I’d be putting my name on the line. I’ve done lots of conversions for Broderbund and I haven’t messed up once. And that’s an important thing to me. Now I’ve got this business thing taking up 80-90% of my time, and I just don’t know if I could handle the pressure of taking on a project this size.”

  I said that in that case, I’d have to reconsider. There was a silence. “Whew! Doug said. “I didn’t realize it had come down to that.”

  Doug drove the others down to their car (parked, like mine, at the stream that blocked Doug’s driveway and which only Doug’s Volkswagen bus could cross) while I stayed behind. After Doug came back, he and his wife and I sat and talked some more. He’s confident in Jim, but admitted he has his doubts about Josh and Mike.

  We chatted for an hour about peripherally related topics. Broderbund, corporate America, the rat race, capitalism, freedom. I was seducing him. At the critical psychological moment, I remarked:

  “You know, all my clipping is done on the byte boundaries.”

  There was a pause.

  “Well, that was a nice thing to say!” Doug exclaimed. He started stroking his beard and asking more questions. “Huh. This is starting to sound not so bad.” In the end he said he’d sleep on it.

  April 4, 1989

  Doug and Jim will do the port. Yeah! We spent the day hammering out a deal. Ended up at 7.5% royalty, to drop to 5% after 67,500 units, and $35,000 in advances.

  First POP packaging meeting with the marketing department. I’ve never heard so many bad ideas proposed in such a short time (“We could package a bag of popcorn with the sneak previews!”) At least everyone was enthusiastic. Brian thought it had gone well.

  April 7, 1989

  Doug Greene called me to say he’d woken up with the night sweats and paced until dawn and finally came to the conclusion that he can’t do it after all. I talked him down and offered a six-week trial period, at the end of which he can decide whether or not to take on the whole job. That, he agreed to.

  Shit. I’ve spent all week on this, and now all I’ve got is a “maybe.” I need to find a backup.

  April 11, 1989

  Packaging meeting #2 with Sophie and Brian. Latricia wasn’t there. Sophie was extremely nice to me. Nevertheless, she’s an idiot.

  Worked on the in-game cosmetics. Tomi advised me to keep it strong and simple. The Byzantine latticework and intricate patterns should be inset, as part of doors and windows and so on. Good advice.

  April 12, 1989

  The game is coming together. I spent an hour at QA today watching them play it. They’ve been developing levels and playtesting them on their own time, just for the fun of it. That’s a good sign.

  Everyone says POP will be a huge hit. Everyone. I can’t walk from one building to the next without someone stopping me to tell me how great it is. This product has both grass-roots and top-down support.

  All I have to do is finish it.

  The urge to go to my Mac and work on the new screenplay is overpowering.

  (Patience… just a few more months… Hang on to that urge. You’ll need it. Put it away somewhere where it’ll be safe. You’ll have the whole rest of your life to pursue your screenwriting and directing dreams… after you finish the game.)

  April 14, 1989

  Robert got into Yale!

  April 22, 1989

  By the time POP ships I’ll have been out here three years. Two years of actually working on the game, plus six months working on screenplay stuff and another six months screwing around and traveling and so forth in between.

  April 24, 1989

  Dropped in on QA. Will and Randy showed me some of the levels they’ve worked up for Prince of Persia. It was a strange feeling, picking up the joystick and finding myself in a world I didn’t create. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of what this game must seem like to everyone else.

  Met with Brian and Bill McDonagh to ask for an advance to pay for the IBM conversion. I don’t think there’ll be any problem.

  Reality Check

  April 25, 1989

  Paul Dushkind showed me his sketches for the package design. I wasn’t blown away. So, when I got home I made a few of my own. Now I have a problem; namely, how do I show them to Paul without making him feel threatened?

  It’s not that I insist on doing everything my own way. I’m always hoping someone else will come up with something better than I would have done myself. But when they don’t…?

  April 26, 1989

  I didn’t have the nerve to show Paul my sketches, so I showed them to Robert. “They’re a lot better than Paul’s,” he said. Uh oh.

  Doug Greene spent yesterday over at Jim’s, setting up to get started on the IBM version. They’re coming to Broderbund on Monday. Doug’s really pumped up. I’d like to have a really hot demo to show them, to maintain their current level of enthusiasm.

  It’s a strange feeling – all this machinery is being set in motion without me. People are going off and doing things on their own. It’s exciting.

  April 28, 1989

  Dr. Ward said I should rest as much as possible, so I stayed home and built a really boffo level. Named it BACH cause that’s who I was listening to.

  April 29, 1989

  Stayed home again and listened to opera and built game levels. I’m fed up with being home.

  May 1, 1989

  Doug and Jim came by. Amazingly, IBM POP is really happening.

  Impromptu meeting with the art dept. to go over Paul’s sketches. David K. is my nemesis. It’s Brian and me against the world.

  May 2, 1989

  Today when Brian started to give me a hard time about paying for Jim and Doug’s equipment (a mouse and a couple of joysticks – maybe $150
worth of stuff), I did something almost unprecedented in our relationship: I argued back. To my surprise, Brian not only caved, but ended up practically apologizing.

  It made me realize how much I usually avoid confrontation. Conflict always gives me the anxious feeling that I need to say something to defuse the situation and restore goodwill, even if it’s at my own expense. Today, I realized the formidable power of acting tough. Not only did I get my way, I actually gained goodwill points, because I made Brian feel bad for having upset me. There’s a lesson in that. I need to develop the ability to stand my ground.

  The biggest conflict I see looming is with David K, who’s bent on doing something stupid with the box design, and who likes sleazy-looking princesses with pouty lower lips (like the Karateka box) whereas Brian and I prefer a more cool, chaste brand of ingenue, as exemplified by the poster of Diane Lane in Robert’s and my office. (During our meeting with Nancy and Paul, Brian got excited and pointed to the poster: “Like her!” he exclaimed.)

  Alan Weiss dropped by to show me the new hand-held Nintendo “Game Boy” (a play, I guess, on Sony “Walkman.”) They’re licensing a version of Karateka for it.

  Tomi says that since Dominique came back raving about POP, the programmers in France have been trying to adopt my animation techniques, but that they don’t have it quite right yet.

  May 6, 1989

  Robert’s friend Jim came by the office with his three sons. Ages 3, 5 and 7, blond kids with runny noses and an insatiable lust for computer games.

  I gave them the joystick and watched them spend a good half-hour trying to get through Level 1. It was instructive. Chris — the oldest, an extremely sweet-natured and gracious kid — was generous about sharing with his brother Stu, who insisted on repeating the first three screens himself every time, then handing the joystick to Chris when he got to “the sharp part,” as he put it.

  “It’s so lifelike,” Chris marveled. I asked him if it was too hard. (This was after they’d died on the spikes about 50 times in the first half-hour.) He said “No, it’s just about right. But it’s challenging.”

  The whole thing was very encouraging. For one thing, they liked it. I don’t mean they said they liked it; I mean they played it. These guys are my target audience. After watching them I’m more certain than ever that this game will be a hit.

  The other thing is, I liked them. Lately I’d been starting to feel jaded about this whole enterprise – “Oh well, it’s just a computer game” – but watching Chris and Stu, I realized: These guys love games. They love games the way I loved movies in college. Even more, because they’re not interested in girls yet. Computer games are like the air they breathe. If I can make one that they can get excited about, that’s a real accomplishment. That’s something I can be proud of.

  So I worked till ten with renewed enthusiasm.

  The game is really turning out well, by the way. When you’re fighting a guard, forcing him back toward a ledge, and the spikes spring out below, and you’re down to your last unit of strength, and you push him off the edge – it’s incredibly thrilling. It’s like an Indiana Jones movie. There’s no other game that even remotely approaches this. If there’s any games market left by this Christmas, this one should corner it. (He said modestly.)

  May 7, 1989

  CGDC (Computer Game Developers Conference) in Sunnyvale. Robert and Doug and I skipped out early and went to Great America. We rode the Demon and the Grizzly and Loggers Run.

  May 9, 1989

  Spent the day hard-wiring the shadow man into the level I built yesterday. It’s kind of a letdown. For over a year now, the shadow man has been this awesome idea that everyone gets all excited about when they hear it. Now, it’s just… what it is. The unlimited potential has been replaced by the concrete reality of what I programmed today.

  This time, there’ll be no time for me to tear it all down and reprogram it five more times, to try to more fully realize the dream. The hundreds of thousands of kids who I hope will play this game will encounter the shadow man just as I programmed him today. I hope he blows them away. I’m too close to it to be able to tell. If not, well, I blew it.

  May 10, 1989

  Paul showed us nine color comps for the Prince of Persia box. “Us” was David, Nancy, Sophie, Diane Rapley (head of marketing), Brian, and me. In the end everyone agreed on #5. I had the feeling that if I hadn’t been there, they might well have picked #6, which showed a bunch of guys with swords bursting out of a paper movie poster.

  May 11, 1989

  Everyone is being nice to me because they think my game is going to be a hit.

  May 15, 1989

  Mo, Larry and Sebastian were very impressed by the game. Mo especially liked the new additions – the Fat Guard, who I put in today, and the blood smear on the slicer.

  Got a check for $9,000 from Bandai for Nintendo Game Boy Karateka. Snatched from the jaws of bankruptcy once again. My checking account, previously parched and gasping for funds, is now overflowing.

  Brian and I sat at the Mac working on the game documentation (which I promised Nancy for tomorrow).

  May 17, 1989

  Made a disk to give to Doug tomorrow (Brian’s advice – actually something I should have done a long time ago). I made one for Gary too.

  Nobody thinks we’ll make this August 29 ship date. I keep telling Brian: “We’ll make it! We’ll make it!” And I don’t even know if I believe it. But I’ve got to try.

  Microsoft Word 4 arrived via Fed Express. I booted it up and it crashed immediately.

  Added a balcony window that looks out onto a starry night. It really helps define the palace section as a different place. Someday I’ll make the stars flicker.

  The game is taking shape by leaps and bounds, but unfixed bugs are piling up behind me.

  May 18, 1989

  Gave Doug his disk.

  Worked all day on level design and background graphics.

  Everybody’s gone away.

  Just me and Domino’s now.

  I should go running except… I’m so hungry I’d probably faint.

  May 19, 1989

  After happy hour Doug and Mary and Gary and Nancy left for the invitation-only sneak preview of Indiana Jones at the Skywalker Ranch. Lucky bastards.

  I went home and watched an incredibly depressing TV movie starring Ben Kingsley as Shostakovich.

  Someone’s killed the General

  Sheep, their shepherd gone

  If only we Russian people had one neck!

  May 20, 1989

  “I can’t believe you watched that Shostakovich program,” Claire said. “It was supposed to be incredibly depressing! You’re probably the only person in America who watched it.”

  May 22, 1989

  Talked to Doug Greene and Jim St. Louis. Work is proceeding on IBM POP, although not as quickly as Doug had hoped.

  Brian says we’ll be doing a 3.5" disk version after all. That means we can put in some IIGS-specific stuff like Avril’s title screen.

  May 23, 1989

  14 days to beta.

  Things are getting more frenzied. I put in twelve hours today and got a fair amount done (added two new potions and a whole new level), but it definitely wasn’t one-fourteenth of the work that’s left before beta. I’ll just have to work twice as fast, or something.

  Brian handed me the Larry McDermott draft of the box copy. It wasn’t very good. He asked if I could “rewrite it” (i.e., write it) – another little task to fill in the cracks.

  I can’t even think about all the work I’ve postponed until after the beta version – princess and vizier animations, title screen music – and six weeks to do it all.

  (How complete was Karateka two months before its QA signoff? I can’t remember.)

  One thing’s
for sure: This is no time to come up with new bright ideas. I’ll put in the little white mouse because I said I would, and because I’ll never hear the end of it from Tomi if I don’t (remember the leopard in Karateka?), but all other nifty additions go straight to the bottom of the list.

  By June 6, I want things firmly under control. Levels 1 through 8 should be completely playable, with all features implemented, and as bug-free as I can manage. The things that are missing should be clearly defined, with a beginning and an end and no hidden ramifications in other areas. The palace and dungeon background graphics should be in their final form (although last-minute tweaking of the images themselves is, of course, allowed). Michael C. should have done his thing, and I should have it on videotape. (I’m hoping to shoot it Thursday.)

  Aiiiii……….

  May 24, 1989

  Put in the skeleton-coming-to-life animation (under Eric’s supervision).

  Packaging meeting. Things are proceeding with agonizing slowness.

  May 25, 1989

  Robert’s game passed the Star Chamber. I met him in the parking lot at 9:30 this morning as I was arriving and he was leaving after spending the whole night getting the disk ready for the presentation. That’s a great piece of news, just great.

  Going-away picnic for Cathy Carlston at the Marin Civic Center duck pond. Flipped disc with Brian and Rob. Said goodbye to Cathy.

  May 26, 1989

  Yesterday I showed Paul the skeleton. He was thrilled (it was his idea) and has been going around telling everyone about it. It’s paid off more than I could have imagined, in terms of boosting his enthusiasm about the whole project. Just goes to show you.

  People in PD, art and marketing are starting to treat me differently. Brian is delighted and amused by the amount of work I take upon myself. (When I told Sophie today I’d like to take the box copy home and “play with it” over the weekend, Brian laughed out loud. “Sure,” he said. “I’d like to have you ‘play’ with something I wrote.”)

  Brian’s away all next week for CES and is leaving a lot of things in my hands – the final box copy, getting a beta version to QA, possibly the selection of the artist to do the box. I don’t know if it means anything, but I noticed that in the latest schedule Nancy made up, the blank for “Product Manager” now reads “Brian Eheler/Jordan Mechner.”