I will always have a soft spot for the original Prince of Persia. It was one of those games I played constantly as a child, although only when my dad would let me use his Apple ][c.
I only realize it now but it had some very unique game mechanics that even today you don't see very often (ok maybe that's a bit of a stretch but the mechanics were novel to me back then):
- Notably you have 60 minutes to finish the game. Dying doesn't reset the timer, so there is constant pressure to keep moving.
- There is a satisfying parry mechanic. This is still rare to see in 2d platformers.
- Incredibly smooth animation. This could be nostalgia goggles but the rotoscoped animation really stood out compared to other games of the era.
Likewise, but for different reasons: We had a [pirated] copy of the game, and thus didn't have the manual.
Down here in my city in Mexico that's basically how everyone played it, so most of us played only the first level.
At some point, I was tinkering with the "x tree gold" program and saw the "hex view" thing. I remember opening Prince's .sav file, which was a very small file that only appeared after you saved. After tinkering with the numbers I managed to appear in the next level .
It was my 5 minutes of fame at my computer class when I arrived and showed that I had passed the bottles room.
And I became fascinated by cracking at that point.
That is awesome! I love the origin stories.
Pardon my nit but it was stylized `Apple //c` fwiw, not `][c`. That was just `Apple ][` and `Apple ][+`.
A lot of games have time limits, but Prince of Persia made it feel less like an arcade score mechanic and more like part of the story
It was also incredibly difficult. As a kid I couldn’t go beyond the first level. It was also difficult to attack the enemy at the right time.
But still it was an amazing experience whenever I played it. I felt the pressure and the need to start again like no other game nowadays.
But maybe that’s just because I was a kid.
I don't think it was just because you were a kid, if I recall correctly the controls were incredibly unresponsive. Probably a technical reason, that they couldn't or didn't want to interrupt an animation easily, but still.
Years later though, and games like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter have a similar sluggishness / unresponsiveness to them. But it doesn't feel as unfair in those games.
I feel like unresponsive controls must have been a platform or hardware issue. On my (...Dell with Windows 3.1?) the controls were perfectly responsive, and they absolutely had to be. So many things relied on being able to, say, run and switch directions on a dime so that only your toe touched the platform that would then fall and break.
I don't think it was only because you were a kid. The game really did punish hesitation in a way that feels pretty unusual now
>It was also incredibly difficult.
And we dumb kids used to play it without the manual. It was a minor victory day for us when we finally figured out how to pick up the sword!
I remember having hundreds of pirated C64 and Amiga games. When starting a new game, we'd press every single key on the keyboard and try to figure out what, if anything, that key did.
Yeah, it was. It wasn't even my first game - I was like 11 when I first got to it, and by then was a solid gamer having already owned a master system and mega drive game consoles. And still PoP was hard, really hard.
(But I also didn't like it very much...)
I played it relentlessly as a kid (3-6 years old), and never got past the 4th level…
pop.exe -megahit is what I remember to cheat. Then ctrl combinations for powers.
Somehow in my mind the animation of it and Another World/Out of this World felt similar, and way outside everything else that was available at the time. The games even felt very similar, but I never got particularly far in either so that could well be just the perspective of youth.
The most movie-like experience I'd ever had in a video game at the time. Each level was a genuine act of discovery and innovation.
Another notable mechanic was the rewind. Didn't see that again until Braid, which really went to town with it.
That was about 15 years later. The original released in 1989, and there was no rewind.
My favorite easter egg by far in this domain, was the Apple II version of Karateka.
The game came on a floppy disk; if you inserted it in the drive upside down (the Apple II only used one side of the medium) you found (unusually) that the game would load, but was rendered upside down.
It was fully playable. Non trivial given the way those games were written!!!
> - There is a satisfying parry mechanic. This is still rare to see in 2d platformers.
You can see if Dead Cells's parrying mechanic works for you.
I've played a little bit of Dead Cell's but it hasn't stuck with me yet.
I have to admit the game is a little overwhelming but maybe I need to stick with it a bit more.
Part of PoP's charm is that the game is very simple, yet the parry mechanic has nuance - you can buffer parry/attack/parry/attack/... sequences and the timing is just a bit faster than normal enemies, meaning you can wear them out (these fights have a very Errol Flynn Swashbuckler feel to them). Eventually your attack lands before they can begin their parry animation.
Later in the game you meet enemies that hit faster than you can respond to with a parry, so you need to change up your tactics.
Also Nine Sols. It's becoming increasingly popular as games are moving the complexity/flashiness of interactions with enemies to the enemy's side. Rather than learn and perform complex combos like Devil May Cry, the enemies now are the ones with very flashy movesets and now you simply parry/dodge.
Well thanks to the 60 minute game play and no saves, you only ever see the first four/five levels or so. It’s a great game, but that particular mechanic is …kind of annoying.
I remember it having saves? I'm not sure if that was an addition to the PC version or if I'm getting it mixed up with the sequel (which definitely did have them, but was also quite a bit harder so it _really_ needed them)