Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Making of Prince of Persia

An enjoyable trip down someone else's memory lane

Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2020

I didn't know about Jordan Mechner's blog prior to this book, but I'm almost glad I didn't. Lately, I've found enjoyment in listening to the stories of those who have spent their life doing what they love. The surprising, and humanizing, part about Jordan's journal entries for me was how relatable the decision paralysis is when you have competing interests.

I went in with the expectation of pages upon pages of detailed programming, design, and testing notes (which, yes there are some), and found the story of a young man navigating his way through his early career. Present day Jordan's notes in the margins were a fun add to past-Jordan's entries, and the pictures and screen captures complimented the progression of the game development.

On the physical book itself: it feels like a solid book. Pages are of good quality and the pictures printed with decent clarity. Stripe Press gets a gold star in my book.

Thanks for the journey, Jordan! I'll definitely be recommending this to others!

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Gadgetry Guy

Great look into a lucky happenstance of game development

Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2020

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I finished this book in two sittings - it was very engaging, and easy to read.

It was fun reading about the circumstances of a game that introduced ground-breaking advances to the field, especially when the book details how the game was almost ruined by bad marketing personnel.

I found it a little tiresome to read about the author's happy-go-lucky approach to, "Hey, I'm building a game with features never before seen in the computer industry, but gosh, is it really as good as people say it is? If so, how come other people keep preventing this game from reaching the success it deserves, and why don't I have the courage or conviction to step up? And BTW, this is going to be hailed as the best computer game I've ever made! But, do I really want to be writing games? I want to be writing screenplays and directing movies! I want to socialize with all the other young, energetic people who believe they will leave their marks upon the world! But, am I going stir-crazy doing this game programming stuff? Do I even have a love interest? I think I might, but I convenient left out all the details about it in my journal! Now I can't remember!"

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Kindle Customer in FL

I was supposed to be coding all day but decided to finish reading this book...

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2019

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I hope the enjoyment of reading the book makes me twice as productive at coding tomorrow. This is an awesome book. I like reading books based on journals and even more so when it s by a game industry titan like Mechner. I've also read the Karateka book and I spent countless hours back when I was a kid playing and beating the game on an Atari computer that I bought making $35/week working 7 days a week on a chicken farm. That is while I wasn't shooting womp rats with my mark2. Lol. Just kidding but the farm did have some quite robust wharf rats back in those days. I didn't play POP as much as Karateka but always liked the story line.

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B.T. Smith

Got me to start my own creative journal!

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2020

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I ordered a copy of this for my wife and me, because we both grew up playing Prince of Persia in our respective households. I still remember trying to make crazy jumps while the floor below my feet was collapsing, or drinking potions hoping it wasn't poison, all while trying to beat the clock, and that clock was unforgiving!

It was great to read through the daily journal entries and see both the progression of the game and the everyday life of its creator, Jordan Mechner. I enjoyed it so much that I started up my own creative journal over the last month, to track the progress of the rough draft of my new book, as well as my daily life and experiences. I don't know it'll be as entertaining to read as Jordan's, but that's not really the purpose of it. It's helpful to just put the thoughts down, and to track that production progress.

We picked up a copy of his older journal, written during the making of Karateka. I haven't had a chance to read that one yet, but I'm looking forward to it!

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Michael Eilers

High quality printing, unique and personal look at 80s

Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2021

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This is a quality printing job, and the embossed cover is absolutely unique and super interesting. The actual content is some of the nerdiest, most specific to the ‘80s computer game scene details you could ever want - but if you weren’t alive during this time and Prince of Persia didn’t capture your imagination the way it did mine, then it might not be for everyone; this is a journal but functions as a diary as well, and does not have the technical information (such as actual assembler code or graphics blitting techniques) some might crave. However I found it an incredible journey and worth every penny, especially for ‘80s kids who grew up a few inches from the monitor of their Apple II.

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R. Browne

A Wonderful Trip Through a Wonderful Game

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2020

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If you've ever had any experience with Prince of Persia you'll know how legendary the game is within the gaming business. I had the pleasure of working at Domark who imported and distributed the game in Europe back in 1990. I've lots of interaction with some of the players in this wonderful tome but had no idea of some of the details that went into making the game and the challenges it faced to arrive on my desk one day. It's absolutely fascinating and a must read for anyone with any fond memories of this wonderful, wonderful game.

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Jeff Geerling

Very good book about the building of iconic early-90s games

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2014

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I enjoy 'documentary-style' books on old software applications and development teams (for example, Masters of Doom by David Kushner), but was a little hesitant at purchasing this book, since it seemed to be more-or-less a journal of Prince of Persia's author, Jordan Mechner (spoiler alert: it is).

Reading through the book, it had some low points, to be sure, and could've been edited to take out a little bit of the rawness... but in some ways, those parts made the book feel more authentic, like 'inclusions' in a diamond. I loved playing both Prince of Persia and Prince of Persia 2 on my family's old Macintosh, and the book goes into great detail on the trials and tribulations Mechner himself went through in building the game, getting it on IBM, working on contracts and deals for ports to other platforms, etc.

While I'm not a huge fan of the more modern PoP titles and movie franchise, the original games were so good, especially considering the limitations of the early 90's desktop computers. This book recaptured some of the moments of adrenaline I had when playing the game, and was also an interesting look into the video game industry in the 90s.

It's also pretty awesome that you can go look at the original Prince of Persia source code (if you're a programmer, especially doing games, it's neat to see how barebones the actual code was in the 90s!).

I would recommend this book to anyone doing freelance or small team programming, especially in games, and also anyone who grew up playing the Prince of Persia games and having a bit of a shudder on hearing the 'sha-clunk!' of the spikes raising up through the floor!

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A. A. Bieber (no relation)

An engaging story about the challenges of solo development.

Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2013

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Though I purchased and devoured this book in the hopes that it would dive deep into the specific technical challenges of building a rather vast game on a limited platform, Mechner's journals run the gamut from trying to get the best video transfer of self-recorded footage of the prince running or jumping to his quest to get a screenplay produced.

Ultimately, the book was an interesting look at what it was like for Mechner to take on this enormous task completely by himself and the emotional tribulations he underwent while balancing the development of the game against the development of himself as a young person with time and money and no clear idea of how he wanted to spend either.

If you are looking for a technical breakdown of the game and its workings, the source code is out in the wild and plenty of analysis has been done; that is not this book. This is an inside view of its inspiration, creation, and Mechner's journey through it.

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M. Stefanko

Vivid, inspiring, and an amazing recount of an interesting period in game development.

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2012

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It's been awhile since I read a book that I liked so much.

Prince of Persia was a game I grew up with, like many people out there. And Jordan's name recently popped up in the press again when he found the Prince of Persia source code and was able to extract it from the vintage discs. Perhaps the perfect time to jump into his memoirs.

This really is an amazing recount of Jordan's life during this period of time, as well as how this game came to be. You don't often get a behind-the-scenes tour like this one, let alone years later. Reading this happened at a good time for me personally, as I had just moved to San Francisco. So reading about a person living here, but years prior, it became pretty surreal. And theirs a huge nostalgic power surrounding prince of persia in general for me. So please, factor the bias into my fantastic review. But, in all honesty, these memoirs are extremely well-written. The story has a way of sucking you in. After reading it, you feel like you experienced it yourself, or could at least make a moderately accurate made-for-tv movie detailing the events. It's worth the money, it's worth your time. I'd recommend it to gamers and non-gamers alike. It's just a solid piece of literature, and it applies to a wide audience, I can't imagine someone reading this and not enjoying it.

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Andrew

Fascinating diary full of great observations

Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2014

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I remember very well those countless hours I spent playing Prince & Prince 2. I played it on various PCs I had access to back then, 20 years ago. I played it slow and I played it fast, in black&white (monochrome), and in color, with a beeper, and a soundcard. Before I had a soundcard, I made myself a Covox, soldering a bunch of resistors together, and Prince was the very first game I tested my poor-man digital sound interface against. It was mind-blowing when I first heard the game samples. In the next few months I went as far as ripping then the samples out of the game and writing a few songs myself featuring voices from the game. In brief, Prince left quite a mark and it's really unforgettable - it brought me & my friends so much happiness and joy. So I was really thrilled to read through this book and know how the game was actually done. It's unbelievable by modern standards! I was always amazed by how games were written single handedly back then, but I still couldn't believe what I just read now. Aside from extremely interesting descriptions of the development and product management process, the book is full of invaluable insights about the life of a programmer, and the internals of a game publisher. It brought back all those memories from 20-25 years ago when I was a kid hacking around, "cracking" nearly all the games I had for "infinite lives". I "fixed" all the games I had, myself (so that I could play them till the very end), but Prince. To the best of my recollection, I used to play Prince without cheating :) It also reminded me of how I dreamed of writing games myself (and I actually wrote some very bad ones!) only to discover I don't really have neither talent for that, nor stamina. I'm currently involved in a software company, and I have certain relation to project & product management, and seeing how our guys code, I can really appreciate the confessions of this diary. Huge kudos to Jordan for publishing it. I had this thought so many times through this book - it would have been extremely sad if Jordan didn't have enough strength and tenacity to finish the game back then! I was almost like "Please please finish it, dude! We really need it!" all the way through the chapters :) Again, it's still unbelievable after so many years how really groundbreaking the game became.

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