Apple II Bits

Jordan Mechner, rockstar programmer responsible for Prince of Persia and Karateka and keynote speaker of next week’s PAX East convention, published a comprehensive journal of the making of Prince of Persia. In the book and on Mechner’s Web site are notes, sketches, concept art, demo videos, and more — a wealth of information he preserved from decades ago.

Yet for all that time, there was one vital piece of data he was missing: the original source code. Whether it had been overwritten, lent or donated, mistakenly or purposely trashed, or simply lost remained unknown to Mechner, despite his best efforts.

This week, that long-lost treasure fell in his lap when his father mailed him a box of assorted unidentified floppies. Contained therein was Prince of Persia in its rawest form.

It never occurred to me that Mechner didn’t already have PoP’s source code. Given that PoP has appeared on platforms as recent as the Xbox 360, I wonder what version or fork they were basing that port on. It makes even more recent independent ports all the more impressive.

Jake Gyllenhaal followed his role as Mechner's Prince of Persia
with the lead in Source Code... coincidence?!

Mechner’s next task is to verify the integrity of the floppies and migrate the data off them. New hardware like the FC5025 and Kyroflux are miracle workers in our ability to access vintage media via a modern operating system, but the fact remains that the floppy disk is a magnetic medium whose charge is dying. I started (but did not finish) my own floppy migration two years ago. It’s easy to dismiss it as a low-priority project compared to ongoing and more demanding tasks, but it will be all too soon that I’ll have put it off too long.

Once the code is recovered, I wonder what Mechner will do with it? It’s still copyrighted material, so will he continue to keep it a secret — or will he publish it under Creative Commons, allowing a variety of variations and ports?

All this reminds me: David X. Cohen, co-creator of the television show Futurama, reported almost five years ago that he too had programmed an Apple II game that needed rescuing from floppies. I wonder what ever came of that?

UPDATE (Mar 30): Jason Scott tells me, "You’ll be delighted to know I am leading this expedition."

(Hat tip to Sean Fahey)

When Jordan Mechner developed Karateka in 1984, audiences were astounded by the fluidity and realism of his rotoscoped graphics — a technique more effectively executed five years later when applied to Prince of Persia. With the upcoming remake of Karateka, I’m left wondering just how much more realistic Mechner’s work can become. Will he go for a classic, retro look; something more modern; or a blend of new and old? Comedy troupe Karahat proposes the latter with their comedy sketch, Real Prince of Persia:

This fun skit employs the cutting edge of 1984 technology, such as cardboard and rubber bands. But I’m hoping the woman in this skit was expecting to be accosted and was not an unwilling participant. The potential of invisible theater to discomfort its unwilling participants is exactly what makes me so uncomfortable about watching many of Mega64’s videos.

Oh, and still wondering the correct way to pronounce "Karateka"? Don’t look for answers in Open Apple #13, in which each guest and host has his own idea about how to say the game’s name. Listen instead to 1:11 into Jordan Mechner’s interview with G4 / X-Play:

(Hat tip to — who else? — Jordan Mechner)

I’ve written several times about Prince of Persia, Jordan Mechner‘s seminal platformer that debuted on the Apple II and has since been translated, reimagined, and adapted across video game platforms, comic books, and Hollywood. At its core, the game and its plot are simple yet enduring, having survived across decades and dozens of reinterpretations. Why?

This is not the Prince of Persia you grew up with. What’s given him so long a life?

Ryan Lambie at the Den of Geek has an answer. In a thoughtful if occasionally rosy reflection on the original game, he points to Prince of Persia’s tension and challenge as its timeless qualities.

It didn’t matter that the levels themselves were a comparatively sparse amalgam of grey walls, blue tiles and white spikes — when the Prince hung by his fingertips above a precipice, or leapt through a closing gate with barely a second to spare, the experience was akin to stepping into the shoes of Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker.

[But] was the game’s challenge that made it so addictive. No other game could match its sense of danger, nor the horrendous sense of loss when the Prince was inevitably sliced in two, run through with a sword, impaled by spikes, crushed by falling masonry, or had his bones shattered by a precipitous drop. Even now, it’s difficult to think of a game whose animation, control system (which, looking back, was extremely fiddly) and level design merge so seamlessly.

As true as it is that Prince of Persia possessed these traits, I’m not sure they can explain what makes the franchise unique. Many early computer and arcade games possessed their own kind of anxiety and difficulty: who can forget being chased by stormtroopers through the halls of Castle Wolfenstein? That game inspired a 1992 first-person shooter and a series of modern sequels, but I’ve not witnessed it infusing popular (or at least geek) culture of the degree Prince of Persia has.

Is it just luck of the draw that made Prince of Persia succeed in ways that its contemporaries, such as Choplifter and Lode Runner, have not? Or has Jordan Mechner’s genius made his opus into something unquantifiable and irreproducible?

There’s long been a rivalry (friendly and otherwise) between the Apple II and Commodore 64 communities. But there’s much goodwill, too, with software and hardware being adapted from one to the other. The latest such example is Prince of Persia, the classic platform game that debuted on the Apple II in 1989; Mr. SID, a programmer from the Netherlands, has now ported it to the C64, with the result available for free and immediate download. Here’s a sample of the gameplay:

Wired‘s Duncan Geere reported that the game was "painstakingly recreated the game from scratch using the original Apple II code." That seemed an unlikely contradiction: was it made from scratch, or did it use Jordan Mechner‘s original code? If the latter, from where was that non-open-source code obtained?

A more careful reading of the developer’s blog reveals that the Apple II version’s graphics and level data were indeed used, but the game engine came from Freeprince’s Princed Project, a reverse-engineering of the Apple II game:

The Princed Project is the sum of many sub-projects related to Prince of Persia. Such software includes level editors, graphic and sound editors, resource extractors, and a new open source engine for the game. All the software in this website is Free Software, and is also available for several platforms.

Is this piracy? IANAL, but even from an ethical perspective, it’s hard to say. As I opined in Open Apple, the effort and passion that drives an unauthorized port honors the original and pays it homage. And since there is no alternative to playing this game on the Commodore 64, this port does not detract from sales of the original, mitigating the damage. But none of this changes the fact that it is unauthorized and likely infringes on the original author’s rights. It’s a gray area.

Regardless, Mr. SID’s accomplishment is remarkable, and I applaud him for spreading the Apple II love.

UPDATE: Jordan Mechner himself commented on the developer’s blog:

That’s crazy! Back in 1989, when I was making POP on the Apple II, I couldn’t get anyone interested in doing a C64 port… because it was too old a system :)

Hat tip to Wesley Yin-Poole, by way of Edge Magazine.

Plenty of Apple II games are getting sequels and reboots or are serving as inspiration for spiritual successors. But, except maybe on the iPhone, fewer games get outright remakes: one-to-one translations that preserve the gameplay and layout of the original while adding modern graphics and controls.

Prince of Persia is a notable exception, having been recrafted for the Xbox 360 four years ago. Available as a $10 downloadable title, it lets today’s console gamers experience the classic fun of Jordan Mechner‘s best-known game.

Steve Melton’s review (published just last week — a retro review of a modern classic that’s a remake of an original classic? — gives the game a seemingly lukewarm reception, saying that though it’s fun and attractive, it boasts no additional content over the Apple II version and thus is overpriced at $10. I’m a bit biased in the matter, as Melton points out that the game is aimed at folks like me — “those wanting to relive their days sitting in front of a DOS PC” (or Apple II, if you want to be authentic). And true, the game runs on a sixty-minute timer before which it’s game over. But trying to defeat the evil Jaffar before that clock runs out takes much longer than 60 minutes, courtesy the multiple deaths and wrong turns the challenging game will force you to experience.

IGN’s review, also published last month (why all the recent interest in this game?), is a bit friendlier to the game:

The sequel to the original 1989 game, The Shadow and the Flame, was ported to the original Microsoft Xbox, but only as an Easter egg in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the 2003 reboot of the franchise. Perhaps it too will enjoy a renaissance, as LucasArts’ Monkey Island games recently have.

In the meantime, I encourage other retrocomputing enthusiasts to download the free trial, or spring for the full game right off. POP Classic was one of the first games I bought for my Xbox 360 when I got it as a Christmas gift in 2008, and I consider it an investment well-spent.

Awhile back, TIME.com produced a list of the best computer games from the 1980s. Lists may be quick and easy ways to generate pageviews, but they’re also enjoyable opportunities to reminisce and debate.

Time’s list, which did not limit itself to the Apple II (see Retro Gamer for that list), consisted of the following apparently unranked one dozen games:

• Lode Runner • Castle Wolfenstein • Paperboy • Gauntlet • Budokan • King’s Quest III

• California Games • Ghostbusters • Quest for Glory • SimCity • Prince of Persia • Police Quest

I haven’t actually played many of those games, or at least on their native platforms. But it does inspire me to jog my memory by consulting Wikipedia’s list of Apple II games and list of Apple IIGS games to see which would make my must-play list. Here are my candidates:

• Archon • Arkanoid • The Bard’s Tale • Castle Wolfenstein • Choplifter • Conan: Hall of Volta • Ghostbusters • Karateka

• Leisure Suit Larry • Lode Runner • The Magic Candle • Oregon Trail • Snake Byte • Space Quest • Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar • Wizardry

And that’s not even counting non-commercial games, such as GShisen or Silvern Castle.

What games top your memories of the Apple II?