In an Ars Technica War Stories episode, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner describes how he made the game on the Apple II, fighting hardware memory limits and the platform's decline. It covers the rotoscoped animation and the engineering tricks involved.
Why Hacker News points people here: Repeatedly called essential viewing for game development history and clever work under memory constraints.
“Essential viewing for anyone interested in game development history.”HN comment, 2025
“Essential viewing for anyone interested in game development history.”
Documentary on the making of Prince of Persia
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> "For the first time I felt what it's really like to play Prince of Persia when you're not the author and don't already know by rote what's lurking around every corner." This perfectly captures why code reviews by someone who didn't write the original are so valuable. You can't unsee your own assumptions. I remember seeing the following short but extremely interesting documentary about makings of the game as well: this video - Essential viewing for anyone interested in game development history.
Strongly recommendsmscdexJun 2026
“If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend watching the”
War Stories episode on making Prince of Persia
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If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend watching the "War Stories" video on the making of Prince of Persia: this video On a related note, I also highly recommend the "War Stories" video for the making of Crash Bandicoot: link
Strongly recommendsstefanos82Jun 2026
“Just watch it yourself, you will be in awe!”
Creator explains the tiny details that made the game
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I have watched the creator explaining to us in great detail how he came up with so many tiny details that made it a perfect game for its time! Just watch it yourself, you will be in awe! this video
RecommendssoftwhaleDec 2020
“Arstechnica has a great interview with Jordan Mechner, the creator of this game.”
Interview with Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner
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Arstechnica has a great interview with Jordan Mechner, the creator of this game. A true technical and artistic wizard: this video
RecommendsajdoingnothingDec 2021
“If you haven't seen Jordan Mechner talking about the development of Prince of Persia yet (definitely recommended)”
Mechner on developing Prince of Persia
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If you haven't seen Jordan Mechner talking about the development of Prince of Persia yet (definitely recommended): this video
Cites itclusmoreMay 2024
“you can see more in this Ars Technica interview with the X poster”
Interview with the poster of the jumping animation
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The link doesn't work for me as I don't have an X account, but you can see more in this Ars Technica interview with the X poster: this video
Cites itthrowaway31131Sep 2025
“It was a huge task just to get our programs to run at all not very long ago.”
Example of crazy engineering around memory constraints
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> no more engineering for engineering’s sake I'm not sure many successful engineering orgs did much of that but also the environment our creations live in is much different now. It was a huge task just to get our programs to run at all not very long ago. When I first started coding I was working on some code for a VLSI problem and I spent like a month just figuring out how to get the problem to fit on disk (not main memory, but on disk!). Now there are similar things that run on a laptop [0]. And it's not like I'm unique in having to come up with crazy solutions to problems tangent to the primary problem in this space. [1] Now the infrastructure for our code is amazing and the machines that execute them abound in resources, especially in the cloud. Now that the yoke has been cast off it makes sense more time is spent on the solution the actual problem you set out to solve in the first place. [0] link [1] How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations this video
