If like me you spent your late teens and early twenties in the 1980s, playing this amazing game called “Prince of Persia” then you will really admire the effort it took for another 20 year old named Jordan Mechner, half way across the world from me in India, to build this game painstakingly frame by frame.
The first time you saw the Prince jump in one fluid motion and land with bent knees you knew this was something exceptional - because, this was on bitmapped graphics on low powered CPUs in the late 1980s. It originally was developed and ran on an Apple II running CP/M or ProDOS and was written in 6502 assembly language.
Gameplay on IBM PC - animated gif from Wikipedia.
I was in college studying computer engineering, at the time I first saw the game. I was hooked instantly and got the game on a floppy. My classmates and I spent hours playing and replaying every level until we got to the Princess after fighting the nasty Vazir and a bunch of his hooligans along the way. Even though there were only 12 levels we felt that it took forever to get to the top of the tower and rescue the princess.
Now you can read Jordan Mechner’s journal of how he single handedly created this amazing creative work for the ages. The game has been ported onto almost all gaming and computing platforms since it launched and you can even get it on your iOS or Android device.
The book is a revelation. He actually filmed his younger brother in various poses that the Prince character would do and rotoscoped the animation so that it looked lifelike. Very honestly written, Mechner's journal shows a rawness in thought and boldness in approach on how to solve complex problems and achieve slow but steady progress daily.
It took him almost 3 years to perfect the game and when finally released in 1989, he was completely burnt out.
The journal should be an inspiration for every young person in college or starting out their career on how to overcome challenges in life and stick to your passion. It also is a lesson on how to achieve extreme focus and not give up.
But the most important lesson is about keeping a daily journal. You never know when that could become a published book ! I use the Day One app to keep a daily journal. More on that in another post soon.
The saying goes that everyone has one book, one movie, one game, one big achievement in them. This was Mechner's. And it certainly lasted the sands of time… 😀