Ars Technica, the gaming and tech website, has been running a video series called War Stories. It interviews game developers from the early days of certain platforms and hiw they used to fight with the available tech. Managing memory, hacking the CPU etc.
I only recently discovered this but really enjoying them.
I really enjoyed the Prince of Persia one. I have my own war story there that I’ll maybe tell one day.
Regarding the game itself: it was one of my favourites as a kid and Sands of Time was another favourite series two console/engine/tech generations ago. Read Mechner’s journals when he first published them, so I knew a lot of the stuff covered in the video, but it’s still awesome to see the original footage he used for the rotoscoping.
Random fact: Mechner sent fan mail to John Romero back in the day. He was apparently impressed by how Commander Keen was able to do sidescrolling on PC.
I think John Romero sent a letter to Mechner, not the other way around. But still, seeing these giants be fanboys is still awesome!
Oh wow… Yeah, I completely misremembered the direction of the Stan-ing! Crazy!
And to think that Id would go on to revolutionise side-scrolling adventure games on PC with Commander Keen.