Jordan Mechner on building Prince of Persia with rotoscoping and tight memory

Jordan Mechner has described how he developed the hit video game Prince of Persia for the Apple II in the 1980s, using rotoscoped animation and cinematic influences such as the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Mechner said he began in October 1985 by videotaping his brother to capture running, jumping and climbing, then manually digitised still frames and retouched them in two‑tone black and white because there was no animation software. He moved to San Francisco to work at Broderbund and the project ultimately took four years; memory limits on the Apple II’s 48K led him to invent a byte‑shifting technique to create a “Shadowman” opponent without using extra memory, and he rotoscoped sword moves from a 1938 Robin Hood film to add combat.

The Apple II was waning by the game’s 1989 release, but Mechner said it did well on other platforms in Europe and Japan and was rereleased on PC in the US, after which “sales picked up” — “You wouldn’t get that second chance today,” he said. Publisher Doug Carlston said the title went platinum and sold over 2m copies, influenced later 3D action‑adventure games such as Tomb Raider and Uncharted, and helped lead to a 2010 film adaptation of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; Mechner said the game ultimately rescued him after the commercial failure of his other project, The Last Express.

Key Topics

Culture, Jordan Mechner, Apple Ii, Rotoscoping, Broderbund