Prince of Persia review
By Simon Walmsley
Copyright (c) 1990 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
Those who remember Karateka will remember the excellent Br0derbund arcade game that used cinematic techniques to tell a story within a computer game. Thematic music, characterisations of the good and evil guys etc were all used to excellent effect. It was so successful that Jordan Mechner (the game's author) sold over 400,000 copies. It even spawned an amusing 'Take One' send up called Karateka II (with extremely funny action scenes).
This time Jordan's out with a vengance, with Prince of Persia from Br0derbund. The animation is smooth, easily controlled with keyboard or joystick, and music combines with sound effects very well to make a very enjoyable game. The plot is simple. You are an adventurer in Persia many years ago. While the Sultan is off fighting, the Grand Vizier (evil of course) Jaffar has seized power. Jaffar wants the throne via the Sultan's beautiful daughter, but unfortunately for him, she loves you. So you are stripped of your sword and thrown into one of the deep dark dungeons. Meanwhile the princess is given an hour to decide - marry Jaffar or die.
Sound easy? To get to the princess you've got to escape from the dungeons, find your way to the Sultan's palace, and then get to the top of the tower (within an hour of course). Naturally Jaffar is not a simple man to kill - he has all sorts of magic tricks that he plays on you. Just as the clock ticks away in Captain Goodnight, the clock ticks in Prince of Persia. Over 250 rooms to explore, each with tricks, traps, swordfights to win, and evil guards (who get more skilled as you near the princess) to vanquish.
The game comes with a double sided 5.25" disk (the game's first two levels are on side 1) and a very straightforward manual with even some hints.
Prince of Persia lets you save games only after you have reached level 3. Why not before? If you forget to press the Open-Apple key just once in a particular circumstance you could end up plummeting 3 stories to your death and having to start again. Yet after level 3 you can save and restore as often as you like (but only one saved game at a time). Maybe they think that the game isn't worth saving before then, but at least I would have liked the option.
The gripe I have with the game is the pseudo compatibility with the GS. There is a title page for GS users, and it even slows the processor down (ie it recognises the machine). The major problem is that they reset ALL (and I mean ALL) the battery RAM screen parms (ie it resets the screen colours, the text colours, the background colours etc), and unless you have a utility like ILTS to restore them all, you'll be really annoyed with the program for doing this. The other annoyance is that the game was only released on a 5.25" disk, and won't easily convert (ie you have to completely disassemble the operating system) to run on 3.5 or a hard
disk at all. Although Roland Gustaffason did the disk routines and they even went as far as putting a GS title page on the game, I'm really surprised that they didn't bother to stick the game on a 3.5" disk. Even so, it's good enough for me to dust off my old drive and connect it to my GS for the sole reason of playing this game.
If you have a //e or a //c, it's an excellent purchase. If you have a GS, get it only if you can stand having all your parms reset whenever you run it (or get ILTS from Richard Bennett at any of the User's Group // meetings).

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