Prince of Persia

A prison dungeon, a ticking clock counting down the last hour of life, and a princess who must be saved - Prince of Persia brought animation to the Amiga so smooth that players didn't believe their own eyes.

The game was designed by American Jordan Mechner and the original was released in 1989 for the Apple II. Mechner's groundbreaking idea was rotoscoping: he filmed his brother running and jumping to capture the hero's movements, and then transferred the resulting animations into the game. The character thus moved with a realism that no one had seen in platformers before - running, jumping, climbing, and cautiously crouching over a chasm looked incredibly natural.

The gameplay combined demanding jumping over traps with swordfights and logic puzzles in the form of levers, pressure plates, and disappearing floors. Above it all hung the relentless time limit of one hour for the entire rescue mission, which added tension and forced the player to be both bold and precise at the same time.

The Commodore Amiga version was among the most visually accomplished thanks to a richer color palette and quality sound. The smooth animations for which Prince of Persia was famous stood out all the more on the more capable 16-bit hardware, and here the game became one of the benchmarks for what a cinematic platformer should look like.

Prince of Persia went down in history as the founder of the so-called cinematic platformer genre, and many years later one of the most successful gaming franchises grew out of it, including the Sands of Time restart. Mechner's emphasis on realistic movement influenced entire later generations of developers.

Why play: For the timeless combination of tension, precision, and animations that defined what a truly cinematic platformer can look like.