The Games - Review of Prince of Persia

Well, Prince Of Persia was the surprise all formats hit of 1990 or so. So, unsurprisingly it only arrived on the SAM in about 1992. But this is typical and we SAM owners have come to expect things to be late.

It revolves round the plot of an evil Arabian bloke called Jaffar kidnapping a princess, and saying that he'll kill her in an hours time or something, this, as with the plots of many games, is completely irrelevent and the game boils down to jumping over pits, dodging visciously sharp blades and stabbing various people to death. And as platformers go, it's pretty playable. The thing that made it popular in the first place though was the animation.

It is SUPERB, the graphics for all versions where drawn from Arabian type films to give a really human fluidity to all the movements of the main character.

He skids, runs, jumps, and is impaled on spikes in a really humanoid manner. The game must have loads on animation, in fact it has twice as many frames as the Atari ST version.

In fact, rumour is, the graphics where converted from the PC version by copying them down, pixel by pixel, onto graph paper, then reassembling them on the SAM.

Let me tell you, graph paper is a bugger and a half to design graphics on, I know from bitter experience...

Anyway, the game. Well it's played over about 12 levels, each one being quite difficult, and taking quite a bit of planning ahead to solve, as trigger pads around the map open up previously shut doors allowing access further into the level.

The goal of the first level is to get the sword, thus enabling you to kill the guard and get to the exit to the next level. It's actually quite hard and it can be annoying falling to your death because of a slightly miss-timed jump.

But once you get through the first level, you make gradual progress, and the learning curve is quite smooth up to about level seven (whereupon it gets unfeasibly hard and evil), each level bringing a new magic potion, enemy or surprise into play.

It plays alot like a story as, in between levels you see the captured princess crying, or talking to her pet mouse or something. This is a nice touch, and, occasionally the princess's actions have a direct affect on the level. Though I won't spoil the pleasant surprise.

So, how do I rate it...

• Graphics : 87% - Very nice, and beautifully animated. Backgrounds are a little bit bland, though.
• Addictivity : 85% - The gradual progress keeps you coming back...
• Instant Appeal : 92% - Very good, the plot element is quite grabbing.
• Sound : 80% - Nice rousing music on intro screen, good spot FX too.
• Overall : 83% - A very playable game, which maybe gets too hard.

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