Prince of Persia

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Name: Prince of Persia Year: 1990 Publisher: Brøderbund Developer: Brøderbund Platform: PC Genre: Action Total rating: 82.2% - rated 76 times rate now: please log in to rate Submitter: Res Added: May 29 2004 Warez status: Abandonware

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Author: Cannonballsimp Date: Aug 15 2011 - 18:59 Score: 60 points

PRINCE OF PERSIA – Historic side-scroller

Assessing the merits of an acknowledged classic is always difficult. Equally difficult is forming a genuine judgement of those games we played earliest (which might have been just about the only game we had at the time), before we had had a range of gaming experiences. I am faced with both of these problems in the case of Prince of Persia. I will therefore not attempt any kind of dispassionate judgement on the quality or historical importance of the game in this review.

The thing that struck me when I played Prince of Persia for the first time was the fluidity and life-like quality of the Prince's and Guards' movement. It was like nothing I'd ever seen in a game; it made one feel like one was not manipulating a program, but directing an actual human being. Then there were the torches lining the walls, flames dancing realistically. In my opinion, only the original Lemmings comes close to this in suggesting life with so few pixels. When I look at it today, I'm still impressed by the way the Prince slides when you make him change direction suddenly, and the way he sways when hanging from a ledge. A quick block-strike combo when fighting the fat guy in level 6 is still satisfying, as is killing a guard by backing him into a slicer or spike pit.

The controls were simple. The arrow keys, plus Shift and Ctrl, accomplished all the Prince's actions – fighting (no fancy combos – only block, strike, shuffle, sheathe sword – but the combat never felt limited), jumping over deadly spikes and deep pits, clinging to ledges with 'our' fingertips, hauling 'ourselves' up to a higher storey of the level to get that valuable potion (I first played the game on an old amber CRT which made it impossible to distinguish between blue potions (bad) and red potions (good); I memorised the colour of every potion in the game!).

I don't think any moment in any game since then has been as rewarding as the moment I finally figured out how to complete level 12, and was able to complete the game. In 1990, the PC game industry was not the vast, profit-driven industry it is today; the possibility of Googling “Prince of Persia walkthrough” and getting 5 million results did not exist, and games sometimes contained truly obtuse puzzles. If you were stuck, you were stuck, pretty much, and I was stuck on level 12. The friend who gave me the game had warned me that “there was a bug in level 12.” When I discovered the simple but counter-intuitive solution I was so excited that I phoned him immediately to relay it to him. So I encourage you to play this, but I won't spoil the pleasure of solving level 12 for you, other than to express my wish that I more games would ask us to think in that way.

	Type / Title	Downloads / Views	Action
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	Cheats	4775	Read
	Ingame music - MP3 (192kbps)	270	Download

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By Audiovisualbastard - Feb 12 2011 - 20:42 This is really cool, I've been looking for this for a while, and found a lot of crappy clones, but they weren't as good as the original... Clearly worth the download

By Pandy357 - May 13 2010 - 20:48 I still remember the very first time i completed this game and i was so happy   After you do it once then its a piece of cake

By Volverine - Apr 07 2010 - 16:28 This game was too hard to me - especially skeletons - but i tried again and again... then i thought that it is made that it cannot be passed - i had Time over... But finally i win!!!! Great game!

By Prozac - Feb 09 2010 - 19:35 one of the greatest classic around !

By Danpgregoryclassic - May 08 2009 - 15:07 how do you attack? i know blocking is the up key, but i always die before I can attack

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