aspiring screenwriter named Jordan Mechner first came up with the idea of a game in an Arabian Nights setting. By the end of the year, a contract was drafted with Karateka-Publisher Brøderbund, and Mechner had shot footage of his brother David performing various movements intended for the game – only the first of many recording sessions in Prince of Persia‘s development.

Mechner had first applied rotoscoping – that is, a live actor is filmed by a camera doing a variety of movements, and then an artist traces those images on a computer – for Karateka, and for his new game he would refine the technique. Even in the earliest demos, the hero of the game still frequently referred to as Baghdad (the title Prince of Persia was first thoughtproject as well: Robert Cook, designer of D/Generation contributed many ideas like the legendary mirror scene and helped with the recording of the remaining animations. Mechner got his father to compose the musical score, which mixed several styles of oriental influences and was maybe the first effectively done cinematic soundtrack in a video game. Both Pierce and Cook later worked with Mechner on the immensely innovative and underappreciated adventure game The Last Express.

At the end of a long and sometimes troubled development, Prince of Persia finally shipped in October 1989 for the Apple II. However, despite critics revering the game and everyone’s confidence that Prince of Persia would become a huge hit, the game initially didn’t do very well. The Apple II was all but a commercially dead