Stumbling through Prince of Persia on Almost Everything
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- It's the 25th anniversary of the release of Prince of Persia! Which is a fact I hadn't actually realized until this afternoon - I'd had this video in the works for a month or so and it was just an amazing coincidence that it was ready to go up today.
Since I was about seven years old I've been a massive fan of Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia. It's an excellent, carefully-made game which invented the "cinematic platformer" sub-genre, and was notable for featuring a character who actually looked and moved like a human being - a mundane thing in a game today, and so it's difficult to express just how outstanding this was at the time.
As it was released as the 8-bit era was ending and the 16-bit one was beginning, it was feverishly ported to just about every console in existence by very disparate teams, and this video examines the success or otherwise of each interpretation of the game. - Hry
I liked the barefoot version of the Prince from DOS. He seems like he can be hurt easier with no shoes and with just white clothes. Giving him shoes, a vest and a turban makes him seem more like a soldier than a prisoner. He did just get thrown down in a dungeon you know.
Perfect
You are a dedicated human being, and I loved this video.First one of yours that I've seen and you can FEEL the love you have for this game. Good job, keep it up, you got chops.
"Because no-one can read anymore and would prefer to go on Twitter and post photos of their lunch"
First video I've seen of you and I subbed right there.
Now, in Twitter in 2019, I long for the days when people would only post photos of their lunch ;)
i did too 😊
I am a proud never-twit-er, uh, er
My god, you're speaking so fast!
Didn't expect to see you here, Mr. Braxnet.
His speech craft is 101 Level! did play a lot at skyrim
Regular Scottish speech right there
You've obviously never watched Zero Punctuation
Life is short. Talk fast!
I really love the SNES version. It is criminally underrated considering how good it is. The music is magnificent, it's my second favorite OST behind Symphony of the Night.
It's a real litmus test for any clickbait "Top 10 SNES Games of All Time" article as to whether Prince of Persia is on it.
As a Nintendo fanboy your opinion is automatically invalid and wrong.
Great stuff here, sir. Lots of work. Your Prince skills are impressive.
Lot of effort put in to this. Very nice :)
your "stumbling through" series is incredibly informative and well done.
I had to sub and even put notifications on. Keep it up.
Thanks! Hopefully I can start making some more of them soon :)
first video of yours I've stumbled upon David. You got a few laughs out of me so I instantly subscribed. Shades of Dominik Diamond in this. Delighted to see you've been regularly pumping out videos for the last few years too, I'll be working my way through the back catalog. Smashing that like button now
Thanks - and hah, how amazing to be compared to Dominik Diamond :)
After scouring the Nintendo e-shops and watching other comparison videos on CZcams, I am confident that THIS is the most comprehensive for and against lexicon regarding this game. Two parts for PoP 1 and an additional for PoP 2, this helped me get a better appreciation to the game's lineage and performance, hopefully this will help me draw my own opinions based on where I approach the game from here. Excellent videos.
EDIT: As I recently learned, "Microids" are still in business, and in 2020 have primarily been publishing physical release versions and ports of some digital only games, such as Asterix XXL, Super Chariot, the Switch ports of the Oddworld series, and most recently the upcoming release of Flashback 2.
This is awesome, excellent work. My favorite game and you fleshed it out amazingly well.
Love your work. Lots of love poured into it!
18:10 "Jaffar seems to have hired them from the ministry of silly walks" hahah love it
And the Amiga version is best for me followed by the new C64 and and then SNES :o)
I'm American and I lol'd at that joke!
That was awesome!
Ah, C64. I knew there was another platform that was glaring by its absence. Did it make it onto the Spectrum as well?
@@markpenrice6253 Oddly, C64 wasn't an official release. It was ported in recent years by @MrSid6581. I haven't played it on a real C64 since it requires some extra hardware I don't have, but it's still an impressive feat on an emulator.
Hiii ms mad lemon :'D
7:40 I hate it when the Klingon-button doesn't work
Excellent video! Prince of Percia was one of my favourite games on my childhood! I just played the MS-DOS version and the beginning of the snes version. Thanks for all this information.
This video is still so fun to watch. I wish you made more of this.
Greetings from Dubai.
@26:36 .. Actually, the pronounciation of Jafar's name in the MEGA CD version by the actors is SPOT ON!
Arab Katib That’s great, thanks for sharing all of that explanation - it doesn’t really surprise me that the normal English pronunciation is the wrong one :)
In portuguese we say it wrong too, thanks to Disney I'd guess, hahahaha
Today I learned... Thanks!
Dubai🇦🇪
@@DavidXNewton Katib is right. It’s no wonder you hear the name Jaffar pronounced like that in Thief of Baghdad: czcams.com/video/iLxNZCxTEW0/video.html
Loved your POP and POP2 videos, subscribed ! I can see you are a real gamer at heart like me =)
Check,, czcams.com/video/v4mXrxCe7xg/video.html
Fantastic bit of historical information! Well laid out, thank you for your effort, sir!
As a guy who grew up with Prince of Persia (DOS) this is one of the best videos I've ever seen. Thank you for your hard work!
Thanks a lot, glad you enjoyed it! :D
DOS is probably my favorite version! childhood times!
Yep, and that one was a classic one!
this is seriously one of my favorite youtube vids out there, man what a gem, thanks so much!!!
I absolutely adore Jaffar's boss fight in the SNES version. The way he swishes his cape as his clothes turns into armor made it so epic.
the video is very well done and it has just the information I was looking for.
Brilliant video, thanks mate... You can breath now ;)
I know I've played a few versions but only ever owned the NES and SNES versions and I enjoyed them both.
the snes version seems like it has a lot of heart and soul, like it was made by someone who loved the original and wanted to add to it
and defiantly loved Mortal Kombat so he includes freaking Goro as a boss.
I am a master of the SNES version. I can beat it without dying once.
@@metodoinstinto ok
Hello myself
@@tuxedocream lol hi
Great video by the way, very informative and funny, I laughed out loud quite a bit. Liked and subscribed.
This is a REALLY nice format, with the detailed technical comparison of the game's different versions! Do more!
Thank you! And done :D czcams.com/video/q5E9MLSW5Iw/video.html
How has youtube not recommended this video to me before?
this is great
Excellent!! It must have taken a lot of time and effort to piece this video together.
AMAZING WORK!!! thank you very much.
Thank you for making this video. Only did I now stumbled across this
Click the wheel (realize max resolution is 480p lol) -> Playback speed -> 0.75
you saved me i was about to stop watching! lol
That SNES version is the best thing with "Prince of Persia" in the title.
That brought back some good memories from the early 90s. Thanks.
amazing work
I didn’t realize the Player Character from ZZT had a youtube channel! Subscribed!
I saw this video loooooooong ago and I still watch it to this very day... this is the very first video I saw from you and the one I watch the most... it's just THAT addictive
Thank you for this great video! Very interesting to see all those differences on the different platforms. Prince of Persia for DOS was one of my first games when I was a kid and later I played the SNES version, so I was blessed with two amazing releases! Entertaining commentary!
Thanks so much! The DOS one must have been one of my first games as well, and the SNES one was a nice surprise when I discovered it was so different :)
Indeed. With so many versions, I was happy to learn that I did not miss much at all. If you played the DOS and SNES versions, you basically played every version of PoP1 worth playing. Except I would wish for the DOS version with the MAC high-res graphics, but who wouldn't?
Thanks for a great and thorough video.
That's fantastic job! Thanks!
*PSA:* Someone finally fixed the Genesis version, it now has a romhack with fixed sword fighting and no input lag. There's also a SNES romhack that recreates the original 12 levels.
I've seen the copy protection room on my old PC version as well. Waay back in the early 90s. (never had it mess up instructions though)
Great video btw!
Youre a very brilliant man. Love your content
The GBC version did fix some issues, most notably the combat actually working and the skeleton being an actual skeleton.
I played the GBC and DOS versions a lot as a kid and the GBC plays noticeably different:
- The DOS version moves the prince in quarter tiles, the gameboy version in full tiles. As a result you never really have to line yourself up for a jump like on PC.
- An unfortunate effect of the prince not stopping at the edge of things when walking is that he doesn’t stop for chompers either, meaning you have to run/jump through them instead of walk.
- A running jump in the GBC version only requires 2 tiles of acceleration. This makes some jumps a lot easier than they were on PC.
- There's less momentum involved in the prince's movement in general.
- All enemies share the same AI, which makes level 6 a bit pointless. I believe only Jafar is slightly different; he parries more.
- Guards are stuck on their platform, they can’t fall off or be pushed off, with the skeleton being the only exception. The player can't be knocked off either.
- The potion in level 5 (the one your mirror is supposed to steal) is actually obtainable in the GBC version.
- The upside-down potions don’t exist.
- Health potions and poison potions are indistinguishable from each other. You simply need to know which are which.
- You can’t sneak up on the level 10 guard and thereby skip a huge part of the level. He always turns around, even if you tiptoe your way below him.
- Passwords only save the time in minutes. If the clock says :59 after finishing level one, and you use the password you got to load up level 2 you start with exactly 59 minutes left even if level 1 actually took you 1 minute and 59 seconds. The clock works normally between levels otherwise.
- Entering an incorrect password kills the prince and restarts the game.
The sega CD ending fanfare had me genuinely laughing
They extended it because the ending was WAY too short
Remember being amazed by this game's realistic body movements back in the day.
Masterpiece... and the amount of spoken words per minute, amazing.
oh my god who can dislike this video. You did a pretty good work,very good video
And than Google looked upon a modernitly small CZcamsr and said, "Yes today you shall be popular. Do with this as you please."
To be honest, I vastly prefer the original PC version over every other. The controls are exactly as they should be, the hit-boxes are correct, the close-tiles are identified, the framerate is always buttery-smooth, and the graphics are simple enough so as not to get in the way. While the SNES version is a good game, it's not the same game. It's not so much a version of Prince of Persia as much as it is a reimagining.
When I first goth this (the month of its release), it was because of the excellent Karateka. Thankfully, I was not let down.
The Apple II version is the original version, but yes the DOS port is the best.
@@beatchef Yeah, I remember that now. I tend to forget about the Apple II because I hated it so much. ;)
Love these games
And I bloody love your narration
Only recently been viewing a few of your videos and I actually adore PoP as a series and this is well done. It helps you have a very contagious sense of humor, 20:54 💀
0:33 Dos
3:20 Mac
5:12 Apple Macintosh
6:56 NES
9:04 GB
10:02 GBC
10:58 Master System
12:53 Amstrad
14:39 Atari ST
17:03 TGCD
21:02 Megadrive
24:13 Sega CD
27:48 SNES
out of all of these I can only choose the NES, SNES, GB/GBC, Master System, TG16, so which one is less terrible?
Merci
DOS and SNES are definitely the best...
@9600GTMAN Man, remember when people didn't overuse and abuse the word 'cuck'? And when people were allowed to be political because why shouldn't they be allowed to be? I 'member those days.
@9600GTMAN Politics being in a product is something I don't oppose. If they want to put politics in their product, why would I care to stop them? It's their product, not mine or yours. If it bothers someone, they just won't buy it. There's nothing more to it. Nobody with sense gets mad at the entire Punk genre of music because it's politically charged.
The version for snes is remake?
@@verhalt yes ,lot of changes ,superior version
This was fun, thank you!
Spectacular video. 👏🏻👏🏻💪🏻💪🏻
As someone who played the DOS version completly and then played the SNES, the SNES version was a breath of fresh air and turned out to be actually very enjoyable, to me the new levels and old changed levels felt right in an odd way. There was enough of both old and new that kept me glued till the end.
edit: I as much as I may love the SNES version, the DOS version is still my favourite
Picked up the SNES version 15 years ago and only decided to play it this weekend(!).
I'm absolutely floored. Sure, it's not exactly the same game, but apart from the tasteful subtlety of the original, everything is retained, while all the additions are mostly in very good taste. The graphics are amazing, and fit the gameplay, while the control scheme is perfectly replicated for the controller, which is much more pleasant to play with than a keyboard. This finale is exciting, and the challenge is quite a bit higher than the original versions, making the 120 minutes quite a tight fit the first few times I went for a full run. Another nice addition that I feel you missed it that the game allows you to go on and practice later stages after the time runs out. Or did the DOS version have that? Maybe I forgot.
I LOVE the MS-DOS version, but the SNES version is a masterpiece, and I regret having held out on it for so many years.
Additionally, I completely agree that among all the improvements they did, it's a little sad that they did nothing to spruce up the combat. The bosses are just guards with more health, and following a block with an attack works every single time, and so does just pushing the guard up against a wall. That even works in the final boss fight, making the finale a little silly afterall. The only actual "downside" to the port I feel is the password system saving your time, making it way too easy to cheat. They even make up for the lack of gore with a horrible torture scene in the intro.
Thanks for such a great comment :) The SNES version is definitely great, I was amazed to see a port/remake that went so far and worked so well after the lacklustre nature of many of the others!
the Challenges of the SNES Port :-D … you can Leg-it through the game , wi getting Every Secret .. & defeating most Guards on the way .. 01 hr 10 mins .. and it really duz feel ya Acomplished aLot when Completed .. its a Tricky , devious , Perilous feat Runnin' some of those LeveLz where you CANT STOP you just have2 BoLT Across to Make iT … i nearly fell off my seat while trying 2get Across! .. afew weeks and Figured it all 0ut .. and found Loads of Bits you Line-Up with EveryThing Perfectly N Fly Right Through it .. did 'bout a hundred Challengin'Runz ... never Complete in 1 go tho .. haPPy with 2 or 3 goes! … just RUN!!! .. :-S ..00P!!! - *lol , A MAD DUDE LEGGiN' iT ROUND VERY DANGEROUS ENViRONMENTS DRiNKiNG & FiGHTiNG !!!* :-D
@@DavidXNewton I’d like to add to Morten’s comment about the Torture Scene in the intro; this is only seen in Japan for whatever reason.
The remake on Xbox 360, Prince of Persia Classic is really good too. It seems to be based on the Mega CD version but has some minor SFC version elements like Jaffar using his staff to attack. You can also jump back off walls both on the ground and the air to reach higher ledges and the fat guy is now a sand brute from warrior within. Another one also gets summoned by Jaffar halfway through the original fight with him, explaining why you fight him again on the balcony outside the Princess’s room. This was the first version of Prince of Persia 1 I played and I judge the other versions by its quality. Another cool thing is slamming the gate in the Dark Prince’s face in level 5 and taking the life extending potion he would have stolen. This doesn’t work in any of the 2D versions: he just clips right through the gate. The horrid and clunky frog hop while crouched is replaced with a forward roll like in the Sands of Time games which is a lot more useful and the Prince is more nimble in general, grabbing higher ledges from further away and pulling up faster. He even does a little tiptoe when walking through extended spikes.
After that, there’s time attack mode for speed running and survival mode which has permadeafh. Good for challenge runs. Sword fighting is like the Apple II & DOS versions but with the chance for a small QTE to stun your opponent if you win it, like the 2008 game or more accurately, Warrior Within’s boss fights against Shadee & Kaileena. Harder guards even carry shields albeit mostly for show, explaining why they (such as the level 8 start guard) are so good at playing defence.
The iOS port of POP Classic sucks however: the 3D levels are all redone in 2D as are the characters, making everything look weirdly flat compared to even the original 2D versions, sword fights & wall jumps are a lot stiffer and you can no longer do the latter in mid air. The intro text from the 360 version & all original 2D versions was replaced and now reads like a readme file and like the OG Xbox port of the Mac or JP PC (forget which ones) version of the original included as an extra in the console versions of Sands of Time, it has the credits music playing in the main menu. Thankfully no horrible password system like the Xbox port has. Survival and time attack are here too. I was lucky to beat the former in this version and still haven’t in 360.
Finally, the Japanese SFC version has extra scenes in the intro showing the Prince getting dragged to his cell and tortured. My Japanese skills aren’t very good so I can’t tell if the intro and ending text was uncensored but the gameplay sadly still is: no blood for us in SFC. Boo!
I highly recommend the 360 version of Classic if you don’t have it already. Grab it fast, as the Xbox 360 Marketplace shuts down early next year.
Nice and solid review, two thumbs up.
If you think I'm going to sit here, smoke pot, and watch 35 minutes of you taking about the various releases of Prince of Persia then you are damn right.
This is a damn good video. I’m gonna watch the one about Prince of Persia 2 next!
You remind me of yahtzee circa 2010 and I mean that as an absolutely heartfelt complement. Your writing is hilarious and your fast delivery is great.
Great video! I've watched the whole thing and really enjoyed your dry humour. I had to crack up when you said "Ministry of Silly walks" then I noticed your user name and had to check your videos if there was anything Clickteam related in your videos. Yep can confirm you are who I thought you would be. Nice work, mate.
MasterM
Ah, hi there - and thanks!
Interesting. I played the SNES version. I was always curious about the other releases. Love it that SNES version is really a good port after all.
What happened the the Commodore Amiga and Commodore 64 versions? Well, the title does say almost everything.
carlos muniz He does mention the Amiga in the beginning of the video, I suppose that counts :P.
The C64 version was an unofficial fan remake released in 2011, perhaps he's limiting himself to official releases?
gwishart I downloaded the C64 version and then, er, totally forgot to include it
There is also now a BBC Micro version
The Amiga version is as good or better than the DOS version. Hard to think you passed on a version that would have made the #1 or #2 spots...
I laughed all the way through this- well done!!!
Great video! I was hoping to see the SAM Coupe version as that was the version I played for hours in the early 90s!
Holy man.. take a BREATH every now and then will ya?!?!?
Why, so the video could be twice as long? It worked for me!
The training mode within the Gameboy Color version only exists to justify that version of the game. As noted within the leaked developer's documents, it was actually policy for Nintendo at the time not to accept Gameboy Color versions of a game if it doesn't have at least one feature that sets it apart from its Original Gameboy counterpart (if it has one, that is).
Interesting! Thanks for adding that :)
Don't care about the game, but the narration is awesome and kept me watching - fast speaking, has humor and no 15min intro. Thank you to the creator!
Thanks! The attention this video has suddenly got over the last couple of days has made me really want to get back to making them :)
Thank you for this video
I want to clarify that the turban look originated on the Turbografx version, and Mechner liked it and put it on the Mac port.
WARNING: Spoilers for a 30 year old game!
…God I feel old now.
This guy is the fastest speaker in the entire universe - i had to slow my playback speed to stop my head from exploding. Love your work chap :)
Fantastic video.
Missed the Amiga version (which could be better than the dos version!) and though only recent the c64 version is pretty cool. Great Video!
PC/MS-Dos version of PoP has more varieties than Amiga version but that mainly thanks to more diverse graphics cards that PC could be built with, that supported by the games.
Are we sure about that? other games that were cross PC/Amiga always looked worse on PC
@@rashidisw Ive played both the dos version and Amiga version. Amiga version has better graphics and alot better sound. Pc version was clearly inferior.
Kurt Pedersen
Not if you didn't have a sound card. Sound cards were awfully expensive back then, so when the game came out, a lot of people still had beeper speakers on their DOS based PCs
@Kurt Pedersen The Amiga version had a much better sound, using the built-in FM synthesizer. The DOS version on the other hand used PC speaker sound, although it used the noise channel very cleverly to produce better sound than what you would expect from a PC speaker.
In terms of graphics, the sprites and backgrounds were technically identical but the color palette was obviously different. The controls on the Amiga were also a bit more responsive.
"...prefer to go on twitter and post photographs of their lunch" XD
omg I can't stop laughing.
Now, five years later, I can only wish that people on Twitter did non-contentious things like posting pictures of their lunch :)
Still my favorite video on your channel. Must have watched it more than a dozen times over the years. Very informative and entertaining even with the constant need for speed.
Shame you couldn't include the NEC PC-98 port here as well since you cover pretty much anything else of consequence. Especially considering it formed the basis for the TG16, SegaCD, Megadrive, Macintosh & the SNES version (made by the same developer) along with the FMTowns and Sharp X68000 versions (pretty much straight ports of it) and all that despite coming out in July 1990 just a couple of months after the DOS, Amiga and Atari ST versions, it is no doubt one of the more important ports and certainly would have deserved to be covered here along with it's many peers. ;)
Anyways, thanks for making this video!
Hi, and thanks so much for the in-depth comment! Yes, I couldn't track down the NEC port even though it was the one that really kicked the game into international fame - if it formed the basis for a lot of the other ports then it makes a lot of sense that the Turbografx and SegaCD ones were so similar to each other in particular.
I remember Prince of Persia at the time it was new, the graphics were truly impressive. They were made by wireframing clips that Jordan Mechner had taken of his kid brother jumping and running around the playground. I also found the fencing animations, though somewhere else. They surfaced in the middle of "The Adventures of Robin Hood" from 1938 starring Errol Flynn. Kid me was delighted when I saw that.
I really genuinely thought you were going to play the game on every drug you could get ahold of
That would've been amazing
That's exactly what I thought. On an unrelated note, I now have a new youtube series coming up. I call it "Plugged In, Drugged Out".
In theatres, 2020
Comglaturaton !!
You have just won of the internet !
Seriously though, that was clever.
I thought that *was* what this was. Isn't that why he's talking so fast?
Damn that’s some good analogies and shit
Subscribed
Subscribed, I hope you make more videos like this
Great video!
Wow Prince of Persia 1, is so nostalgic, although I never past level 1, during childhood (and I probably need to!).
I hate seeing awesome thorough videos that have less than 10k views instead of the millions they deserve.
Thanks nonetheless for being one of those views :)
For the first time I had to use 0.75 playback speed, nice review tho
Literally did the same!
I tried it now. But then he sounds like he's a bit tippsy.
Wow, and I found this accidentally randomly poking around for some 8 bit games... You put quite some work into this to assemble a good video on the matter! This was sure one of the most well engineered games of the age, that is, in those versions which did it right. It is nice to see all this variation, how they had to cope with the wildly varying capabilities of those machines to get roughly the same experience through.
Great to see you around again :) It was definitely an interesting era, with such a vast number of competing consoles and computers - even a couple of years later with Prince 2, the number of things it was worth porting to had gone down so much.
I wish more reviewers would rate games like this so I can always play the most optimized versions. Spot on great work, good sir! Keep it up!
DOS version is the best, although I enjoyed SNES version too, as a modified game
The Amiga version should have been shown. It's interesting that it and the DOS version share in the design, rather than the Amiga and Atari ST versions. And the it seemed the code wasn't based at all on the ST version. This all would have been good to show.
aaaa
why doesn't this and the other video have enough attention, i love the hell out of this and that video
Those anime cutscenes are hilarious. Jaffa!
Amazing video!
I'm still waiting for the Magnavox Odyssey port to this day.
The Sega CD version pronounces the name that way in the cutscenes because they most likely took the script from the Japanese version and translated it back into English. Jafar in Japanese would be pronounced as Jafa.
damn weebs ruining everything.
@@MajkaSrajka When this game came out, anime isn't even as popular as it is now. It's just that they used the Japanese script without the context of the game in English.
Thanks for the very nice presentation.
You've made a very comprehensive presentation of these versions. I grew up with the PC version and I feel pretty lucky, seeing the bugs and downfalls of some of the other ports. The SNES is also very good and it shows the developers respected the original and enhanced it too.
The Macintosh version is *the* one for me... nostalgia attack
My first ever game in my gaming life! Dos version and super NES the best ones easily
Great video! Thjanks!
I remember playing this on the NES and I absolutely loved it. My biggest issue was the frustration of randomly dying (nobody had explained the 1 hour time limit for me, and I wasn't good at english back then).