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This weekend, RetroNots, 60 minutes of athleticism.

Lost him its tryhard sequels and ill-considered Jake Gillin-Hall movies is the fact that the original Prince of Persia was one of the most impressive and influential

games of the 80s. It really offered a perfect combination of factors to solidify its claim as a true classic, great visuals, a memorable premise, and great gameplay.

And just to top it all off, Prince of Persia was essentially the work of only one man.

You don't really see that combination of excellence and authorial exclusivity much these days. Only Axiom Verge and Cave Story come to mind for me for the past decade.

And in a lot of ways, Prince of Persia represented the end of an era. It was, in many respects, a last bastion of the old PC days when a team consisting of just a handful of people could create something groundbreaking.

Prince of Persia, like out of this world a few years later, was a rare exception amidst the increasingly resource intensive demands of game fans and the swelling ranks of development teams.

In 1989, however, it was still possible for a lone designer to pull off an impressive feat of game-making on the level of Prince of Persia.

It certainly helped that the game's creator, Jordan Mechner, had both the experience and the resources necessary to make it happen.

Mechner had burst onto the scene five years earlier with the martial arts action game Karataka. And in many ways, Karataka felt like a rough graph for Prince of Persia.

It was a far shorter and simpler game, with very little to do besides dash forward and brawl with enemies. Nevertheless, it was downright breathtaking in its day, blending martial combat with unprecedented animation and Mechner's affection for Japanese film.

There was simply nothing comparable at the time. Irem's Kung Fu master wouldn't debut until the end of 1984, and Konami's Yaiar Kung Fu would appear the following year. In a sense, Karataka invented the belt-scroller. And it wasn't exactly a belt-scroller.

It didn't feel a slight or twitch-oriented as most games of that genre, instead turning each and every encounter into a meaningful and tactical martial arts battle.

Karataka proved to be a respectable hit on PCs, and it found second life on Japanese consoles, fittingly maybe, given the influence of Shumbara films on the game.

Having been created as a side project by Mechner during his college days, it presumably made him quite financially secure before he was even out of school.

Whatever the case, Mechner could afford to take several years to complete his follow-up. Prince of Persia was in development for nearly half a decade before it debuted on Apple II in 1989, and with good reason. It represented a gargantuan effort for a single person.

Prince of Persia was clearly the child of Karataka. Both games featured the same incredible animation style created through extensive use of rotoscoping.

A popular animation technique at film studios like Walt Disney Pictures and Ralph Bakshi Productions throughout the 20th century, rotoscoping involves filming live action reference material, and then tracing over it to create smooth life-like animation.

Sometimes two life-like really. Rotoscoped elements had a tendency to feel out of place in hand-drawn cartoons, but, as the sole style of animation in a game like Prince of Persia, had lent the whole affair a sense of realism and weight.

Mechner filmed himself in his friends and family for reference material. Prince of Persia included only a handful of characters or character types, and each was based on the body language of a different person from Mechner's life.

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