Prince of Persia
by Mauro CorbettaJune 10, 2024
A distant kingdom, a beautiful Princess to save, a nameless hero. All in just 60 minutes.
Rediscover Jordan Machner's timeless masterpiece, strictly in its MS-DOS version.
Racconting you about Prince of Persia, for me is like writing
about a stain in my career as a retrogamer. I vividly remember my
first contact with Machner's game: the first cold months, bad weather, and I
was preparing to test some games downloaded “conveniently” from my trusted BBS (a BBS or Bulletin Board System was the
“network” of the first amateur telematic communications). Even
the Arabian-style setting left me perplexed, not exactly my thing,
and so I tried the game very reluctantly.
The downloaded copy also had
several problems, I had to swear to get it to run, and all
I saw was the intro: in itself it had impressed me, although very
brief: the characters moved with remarkable and very natural dynamism.
Thinking that what I was seeing was a specially made cinematic sequence,
I dismissed the game, branding it as mediocre and not worthy of attention.
Passage of time went by, and Prince of Persia became
a catchphrase for my ears: it was talked about everywhere, in magazines, among friends,
in the game rankings on BBSs. Yes, Prince of Persia had really
fooled me, and to think I should have expected it from Broderbund. The story of
this software house – born in one of those many garages where legends were created
– is marked by few titles, all of considerable depth, but ones that
required commitment and looking beyond appearances. Let’s think, for example, of
Raid on Bungeling Bay, Wings of Fury, or Choplifter:
at first glance they all seem like second-rate efforts, but just start playing and
they reveal their cruel heart… in an instant those mechanisms in
our brains kick in that prevent us from stopping. I made amends, and thanks to curiosity,
I hurried off to pick up the game at the little software shop under
my house.
The first impact is precisely the graphics: that intro that enchanted me was made right with the game’s graphics engine: a exemplary and simply perfect use of the rotoscoping technique. This specific technique has always been widely discussed – for those who don’t know, it is a system used in animation to create a cartoon in which human figures appear realistic, tracing over previously acquired footage, in this case with Machner’s brother while he was busily performing various movements – but few have talked about the impact that results from it at the gameplay level.
Often labeled
too quickly as “difficult controls,” it is much more than that: while normally
a virtual avatar and joystick are linked in a strict symbiosis – “I go to
the right and stop” corresponds to “right and instant stop,” I jump and fall
back and meanwhile I can move – as if the laws of physics and the avatar’s
very weight did not exist, in Prince of Persia that is not the case.
As if
we were to command a person with words: if we order him to run and then
stop, he would dig in his heels and still move forward a few
small steps. In the same way our Prince is “pulled around” for
the whole game, and tries to follow our commands realistically. In simple
terms, Prince of Persia is a tribute to the Myth of the Body.
The bond that
it establishes with us, despite the fact that we know nothing about him, not even his name, is
something meta-referential, that is, the game designer has "broken" the
barrier that separates the player from the game. Just think of the apocryphal novel
inspired by this game, a work by the Russian writer Viktor Olegovič Pelevin, The
Prince of Gosplan, where the protagonist tells of his life inside
the video game, obviously not perceived as such.
The second aspect that leaves us stunned is the sparseness
of the user interface: we have only the three little triangles that indicate our
vital energy (borrowed from Machner’s first game, “Karateka”) and a timer that
appears every 5 minutes of gameplay, which mercilessly tells us how much time is left until
the princess’s death. Nothing else.
There are no clues about where to go,
what to do, an inventory... nothing at all. Not even a soundtrack.
Only the sound of our footsteps and little else. Finally, there is the heavily brick-lined
labyrinth in which we find ourselves. Gloomy, claustrophobic, and full of traps. The
first hours of gameplay are spent trying to move forward cautiously through the various
rooms of the game, trying to calibrate each jump and seeking a way to the
end of the level. All of this serves to make it clear that saving the Princess
from her sad fate, in just 60 minutes, is not only difficult, but hopeless. Because our brick
labyrinth is not linear.
Non is the path that the game seems to suggest to us the shortest. Above all, there is no single path, since, on closer inspection, we can go in any direction, and soon we realize that there is not even an up or a down, a right or a left: the labyrinth of Prince of Persia is the perfect two-dimensional transposition of Escher’s labyrinth.
A deadly level design, which combined with the merciless passage of time, the little vital energy and the vastness of this maze, forces us to run at every moment of the game, looking for the fastest passage. But it is not only a matter of speed and reflexes: it takes gray matter.
Every possible route has its pros and cons: do I save a minute of gameplay or make a detour for an energy ampoule? Do I risk a series of improbable jumps or slow down and face the spikes? Considering that we haven't even talked about the duels yet.
Already this
would be enough, instead there are also ferocious saladins, who must be
fought with sword blows: when we encounter one, the Prince draws his
weapon and the gameplay system changes. We can advance or retreat, parry or
attempt to strike the opponent. If the first fights are relatively
simple, soon things become difficult. Long fencing duels echo through the
labyrinth, with time forcing us to attack, there is no duel that
is not tense and frantic.
Del Machner game, over the years various versions have been released: the first two, for Apple II and MS-DOS, are definitely the best and faithfully reflect what the brilliant author wanted to convey: later the Amiga version appeared, graphically faithful but slower, and then graphically remade versions for the first 16-bit consoles up to today: I can’t recommend them, the useless new graphical presentation only ruins the gameplay experience and the controls, which, even with more buttons, only make the perfect control system less satisfying.
Concluding, Prince of
Persia is a game full of suspense, our simple goal of
saving the beloved Princess is as desperate and dramatic as ever.
Un’avideo game experience intense and out of the ordinary, definitely not for everyone, but those who try it will find a game that will keep them engaged for a very, very long time, not to mention that thanks to its non-linear structure, every new “save” is never the same as the previous one.
Mauro Corbetta
Mauro Corbetta, per gli amici Corby, classe ’77, ha nel sangue i videogiochi e l’informatica, il suo primo home computer è stato un glorioso C64, avuto in regalo a 8 anni. Negli anni ha accumulato una quantità impressionante di riviste del settore vantando una delle collezioni più imponenti, e ricercate, per quanto riguarda i videogiochi. Appassionato ed esperto di arcade e il cosiddetto "retrogame" in ogni sua forma, si propone, anche grazie all'associazione Retroedicola Videoludica Club da lui fondata in quel di Bergamo, di divulgare la cultura del videogioco, perché come dice sempre "imparando a giocare insieme lo si potrà fare per sempre".
Mauro Corbetta
Mauro Corbetta, per gli amici Corby, classe ’77, ha nel sangue i videogiochi e l’informatica, il suo primo home computer è stato un glorioso C64, avuto in regalo a 8 anni. Negli anni ha accumulato una quantità impressionante di riviste del settore vantando una delle collezioni più imponenti, e ricercate, per quanto riguarda i videogiochi. Appassionato ed esperto di arcade e il cosiddetto "retrogame" in ogni sua forma, si propone, anche grazie all'associazione Retroedicola Videoludica Club da lui fondata in quel di Bergamo, di divulgare la cultura del videogioco, perché come dice sempre "imparando a giocare insieme lo si potrà fare per sempre".