Prince of Persia
by Jordan Mechner · first published 2010
50% recommend44% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Candid development journals covering years of making the game in the 1980s, useful for seeing how early games were built and for anyone interested in game development and creative work.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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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/
on “What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s” ↗…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.
on “The Polygons of Another World” ↗Have you read the journals of Jordan Mechner from when he was developing Prince of Persia? They're a fascinating look at the development of early computer games. http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/
on “The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select” ↗From Jordan Mechner's diary of the development of Prince of Persia (POP was originally coded in 6502 Assembler. It took him four years). Reading Jordan's full diary will take you at least eight hours but it is well worth it. > We chatted for an hour about peripherally…
on “The MOS 6502 and the Best Layout Guy in the World” ↗Masters of Doom is a fantastic book, really enjoyed reading that. From that I then also read the Making of the Prince of Persia[1]. This is Jordan Mechner's journal from his time during the making of this game. Not just about the game but about some of his life in general too. Not as riveting as the Masters of Doom, but still…
on “The making of Elite” ↗Re: Prince of Persia. If you've never spent twelve hours straight reading a development journal - Jordan Mechner's is one of the best. http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/
on “Each New Boot a Miracle – DOSBOX in the Browser” ↗…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.
on “Ask HN: Best online courses for startup founders?” ↗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: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005WUE6Q2
on “Commander Keen's Adaptive Tile Scrolling” ↗…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…
on “Show HN: I scraped 3B Goodreads reviews to train a better recommendation model” ↗Has anyone read Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia journal? Was thinking of checking it out: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0578627310?pf_rd_r=HMREHVA...
on “Great books on classic video games” ↗…Braybrook: http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap23/mental1.html "It's behind you" - R-Type Arcade conversion for the ZX Spectrum, free e-book by Bob Pape: http://bizzley.com/ Free sample pages of the development journals for Prince of Persia and Karateka by Jordan Mechner: http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/ Prince of Persia code analysis after it got open-sourced in 2012; by Fabien Sanglard: http://fabiensanglard.net/prince_of_persia/…
on “Post mortem of my one game a month” ↗Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia journal [1]. I also have "Blood, sweat and pixels" on my reading list [2]. 1: https://www.jordanmechner.com/store/the-making-of-prince-of-... 2: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062651235/blood-sweat-and-...
on “Ask HN: What are more books like “Masters of Doom” or “Showstoppers”?” ↗On a side note, I forgot to mention that my inspiration for starting to write my own was reading the 1980's journals of Jordan Mechner, the creator of Prince of Persia. Still to this day if feels like there's something magic about them.
on “The Danger of Journaling Is Introspection” ↗I used to think the same way. The turning point for me was reading Jordan Mechner's development log for the original Prince of Persia. It's long, but worth it: http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2009/11/the-making-of-prince-o... Basically, after the game was finished they spent two years expecting a word-of-mouth breakthrough which never…
on “Everyone I spoke with loved the idea...” ↗Yes, i have :-). It was also very interesting to see the "evolution" of Brøderbund from its early stages in Levy's book to a big slow moving company in Jordan Mechner's Karateka and Prince of Persia diaries (and i'd be very interested to read about the development of The Last Express, which was also developed when Brøderbund collapsed). It is very interesting to piece together these history pieces…
on “Doing Windows, Part 1: MS-DOS and Its Discontents” ↗