Travel Guide

Now that the Prince of Persia was turned into a big time Hollywood movie produced by Disney and featuring actors like Alfred Molina and Jake Gyllenhaal, most people have an idea of what it is. It’s simple title makes it fairly easy to understand what it’s about as well. But do you know where it got it’s start?

The Prince of Persia series is in fact decades old. It began as a video game for the Apple II way back when in 1989 and was one of the forerunners of side scrolling video games. Initially the original Prince of Persia game looked the same as the others of its era. You could only move left or right, could hop up and down and were forced to overcome particular challenges to advance.

Once a player really spent time with the game however, it was easy to see why the game is considered a pioneer. The characters moved much more fluidly than any others of the era, and the main form of fighting was up close sword fighting not tossing projectiles like every other game available at the time. The screen didn’t exactly scroll with you as you walked but switched to the next frame once you advanced past a certain point.

This helped keep higher quality movement and graphics and was another technique adopted by many games that followed. In depth and challenging mind games were incorporated into the game play to break up the repetitiveness of running from level to level doing the same 5 moves. Needless to say after its release on the Apple II it was converted to numerous other consoles and computer systems, and a sequel was approved and released by 1993.

To date there have been about fifteen Prince of Persia video games released, and versions have found a home on virtually every major game system. The new movie somewhat follows the plot of the game featuring the exact same name, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

The Sands of Time series is the overhaul of Prince of Persia designed for newer video game platforms featuring high powered 3-D computers, from the Playstation 2 to the Wii. It is a trendsetter in its own right, being one of the first games to incorporate time travel in game play.

The Prince of Persia has boomed in popularity since its inception and is showing no signs of stopping. Soon toys and costumes based on the series will be flooding the market. There are bound to be countless men’s costumes featuring unique chest plate and arm bands that Jake Gyllenhaal sports as the Prince, and Toys R Us is guaranteed to have to restock their action figure shelves every night. Parents will wish they could turn back time so they could see this fad coming!

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