The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993
Page 19
“Without a country you are the bastards of humanity.”– Mazzini
December 21, 1992
[Chappaqua] A day of cheerful puttering about amongst my stuff. Tallied up twelve months’ worth of credit-card statements, that sort of thing.
I’ve got so much money it hardly seems real. It’s so much more than I need. The awful thing is, now that I have it, I feel the urge to keep it.
It’s good that I’m doing this train game. I should spend the money and not worry about it. The conservative impulse, at this point, is not my friend. If I’m not prepared to roll the dice now, when I’m young and on top of the world and the cash is rolling in, when will I ever be?
I know myself well enough to know that whatever happens, it won’t be my excesses I’ll regret, it’ll be the things I held myself back from doing. In all my life I’ve never yet given a present so lavish, or made a gesture so expansive, or indulged a pleasure so recklessly that I regretted it later. Whereas there are so many things I look back on now and think: That was one of the high points, that moment will never come again, why did I hold back?
I know it’s possible to err in the other direction too, to screw up your life by not thinking of the future. I just don’t think I’m nearly there yet…
January 7, 1993
[SF] Brian came by at four and we got caught up on the last few weeks. It turned out I’d been invited to the MacUser awards as a last-minute replacement for John Baker. So we changed into our suits and ties in the office, and I sped us to the Galleria in my rented toy car (a blue Mazda Miata) just in time for the 7 o’clock dinner.
Man, that was a posh affair. Beat the Tilt d’Or all hollow, budget-wise. Oh, and I won the Eddy. That is, Prince did, and I got to accept the award and make a speech. Brian was thrilled. Susan Lee-Merrow got blasted on white wine and fell asleep in her chair. I was glad I went.
The next morning I picked up the keys and let myself into my new apartment. An auspicious start to my new life in SF.
January 10, 1993
Consumer Entertainment Show in Las Vegas was a hallucinatory experience. Three nights at the Excalibur. Have a royal day.
My roommate was an unhappy Ken Goldstein, having girlfriend trouble. I shared the Broderbund booth with Christa Beeson (demoing Carmen Space), Jessica, and Kathleen, and demoed Prince 2 for about a million journalists. Appointments every half hour. They flipped out, mostly. I think it’ll be a hit.
Saw Dany Boolauck (working for Delphine now), Jean-Michel Blottiere, Richard Garriott (very cool, very much the mogul), Gary Kasparov (I shook his hand! He doesn’t like video games, thinks they’re destructive and harmful to children), Muhammad Ali (signing autographs), Kyle Freeman, Fredrick Raynal (from Infogrames), Ron Martinez, John Kavanagh and Dominic from Domark (they loved Prince 2), Arnie Katz, and lots of other computer-magazine journalists, some of whom were fans from way back and were thrilled to meet me. One even brought along his copies of Prince 1 for me to autograph.
Met Brad Dourif, who was Piter de Vries in Dune and Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He got all excited when I offered to send him a copy of Prince. He gave me his home address and secret unlisted number. “Come hang out with us when you come to LA.” I asked him if he’d consider acting in a computer game. He said: “Sure!”
Had fun cruising the floor with Mike Estigoy, trying to talk to girls. I was doing my best to flirt with Lori from US Gold San Francisco when, in a miracle of perfect timing, an Italian guy named Pietro came up to us and said “Are you the Jordan Mechner? The famous Jordan Mechner? Or are you just some guy named Jordan Mechner?” When we got it straight, he practically fell to his knees and embraced me, he was so excited. It didn’t do me any good with Lori, though.
All in all, CES was a blast. It was, like, my first taste of public life.
Postscript
Designating a particular moment as the end of the story is basically arbitrary, because life just keeps going on… but a book has to end somewhere, and January 1993 seems like as good a point as any to close the “Making of Prince of Persia” journals.
From here on, my journals are increasingly taken up with the saga of Smoking Car Productions and The Last Express. Which is a good story too, but for another time.
I couldn’t have known then that a decade later, I would get the opportunity to team up with Ubisoft, Jerry Bruckheimer, Walt Disney Pictures, First Second Books, and an amazing roster of creative talent to “port” Prince of Persia to platforms far beyond the Apple II, and fulfill many of my childhood dreams in the process.
It’s been 25 years. The pixelly prince is still running and jumping.
Los Angeles
October 2011
Post-Postscript
Hi, this is Jordan again. Thanks for reading this ebook edition of the Making of Prince of Persia Journals. I hope you've enjoyed it.
Unlike the Prince of Persia video games, this book doesn't have a publisher or a marketing campaign behind it. Though its subject may be of interest only to a fairly small number of people in the world, I'd still love for as many of them as possible to discover it. This can only happen through the efforts of readers like you. So if you liked it -- please tell a friend! Tweet it, share it on facebook, post a review on amazon.com.
One last note: For the convenience of readers, I’ve chosen not to encumber this ebook with any sort of copy-protection or DRM. If you read it but didn’t purchase it—and especially if you enjoyed it!—I’d very much appreciate it if you’d go to www.jordanmechner.com/ebook and legitimize this copy now. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and will help fund the cost of running the website and creating future ebooks.
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Many thanks for your time and support!
Jordan Mechner
About the Author
Jordan Mechner is a game designer, screenwriter, filmmaker, and graphic novelist. He created Prince of Persia, Karateka, and The Last Express.
jordanmechner.com
@jmechner
Copyright © 2011 Jordan Mechner
Cover and book design by Danica Novgorodoff