Prince of Persia
Just in time for the summer blockbuster movie, “the Prince’s most epic journey yet.”—XBOX Magazine Journey deeper into the legend—an epic adventure steeped in ancient Persian lore—the tale of a prince from a distant land outside of time. The huge Disney movie adaptation of The Prince of Persia— helmed by Jerry Bruckheimer and starring Jake Gyllenhaal—is sure to make many new fans for the swashbuckling Prince. For all of them, First Second offers a new edition of our graphic novel tale of the Prince of Persia, which Booklist describes (in a starred review) as “a book that’s even better with repeat readings.” Here is the story behind the games, the legend, and the man—a tale of magic and destiny.
Stats for nerds
8recommend
17mentions
16people
2010–2025years
53% recommend41% neutral6% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Here’s a human recommendation if you like that you may like these that I’ve read:
1.Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games — Sid Meier 2.Source Code: My Beginnings — Bill Gates 3.Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making — Tony Fadell 4.Prince of Persia: The Journals — Jordan Mechner 5.A Theory of Fun for Game Design — Raph Koster 6.Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s Legendary CEO — Viz Media (Editor) 7.Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games — Cliff Bleszinski 8.Once Upon Atari: How I Made History by Killing an Industry — Howard Scott Warshaw 9.Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry — Jason Schreier 10.Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture — David Kushner
- Yeah I read that and enjoyed it thoroughly. I know Jordan Mechner's journals making Prince of Persia and Karateka are supposed to be great too if people are into this type of thing, I haven't read them though:
- - How to Start a Startup (YC)
- How to Build a Startup (Steve Blank on Udacity)
- CS183/Zero to One (Peter Thiel)
- CS184: Startup Engineering (Balaji S. Srinivasan)
Best:
Pando Monthly: interviews by Sarah Lacy with founders and VCs. Many go for two or three hours. She goes beyond the PR story and touches on details, doubts, decisions.
This Week in Startups: interviews by Jason Calacanis. You'll learn things that are not in the PR story. Check out the Uber interview with Travis Kalanick for some gore inceptions details..
- Founders at Work (book by Jessica Livingston)
- any book you find by someone who's done it before. VCs, founders, etc. Relevant books can be Jordan Mechner's book about Prince of Persia, Eric Schmidt about Google, Masters of Doom. These contain gems about crucial moments and how people went about doing things, building product, distribution, relations. Peeking behind the curtain.
- I think the coolest part about many games from this time period is how vastly differently they were developed compared to modern games from modern game studios.
"...it is the original version built from 1989 to 1991 by then 21 years old Eric Chahi working alone in his bedroom."
Because he got royalties from an earlier game, and that paid enough for him to take on this project. And he did pretty much everything except the music: Programming, graphics, story, box art. One dude. One 21yo dude. In his bedroom. And he wrote a VM! He wrote his own bytecode! He wrote his own VM host in assembly!! And then he wrote the game in his own bytecode!!!
And then you have the people who ported games in this time period, who often got nothing to work with. No code, no comments, no assets. Disassemble the thing yourself on a platform you might know very little about, and re-write the thing on a platform you do know a lot about. You get a couple of months. Chop chop, the publisher is waiting.
And if you haven't read Jordan Mechner's journals of him writing Prince of Persia from the same era, you should. It's equally bananas. And impressive.
- Re: Prince of Persia.
If you've never spent twelve hours straight reading a development journal - Jordan Mechner's is one of the best.
- I can really recommend Jordan Mechner's Karateka and Prince of Persia journals for a look into game development in the 80s.
Every time I read one I come away energized with the same passion for creating something unique.
Edit for link: http://jordanmechner.com/ebook/
