I stayed up later than I wanted to masochistically playing a video game, because I
knew was soo close to being finished and because I knew it should unlock the original version of this game I played on my old Mac 512k when I was 15.
Turns out that finishing the game isn't enough. Reading a cheat site, it turns out I had to do some special tricks back about a third of the way into the game.
I had a save near there, so I went back and started playing again (another hour). When I finally unlocked it, I revelled in nostalgia for about 2 minutes before I remembered that in these old games, skill is measured in pixels and I no longer had the infinite patience needed.
Ohhhhhh, Prince of Persia!
I never played it but I saw a TV show where the guy is playing a whole day to finish, which is so damn funny.
Posted by: miyagawa | 03/07/2006 at 02:23 AM
Oh the tedious hours I poured into this game as a kid. I don't remember how long it took me to finish that game, but it was definitely longer than a day! I'd like to see that show sometime; is it recent or old?
Posted by: Garth | 03/07/2006 at 07:20 AM
Garth that's almost the exact same experience that I had unlocking the original PoP. Except that I didn't have a save point near the place you have to do the tricks. So I played the first third of the game over (it went much quicker the second time around). And yeah, playing the original with a GameCube controller in infinitely more frustrating than playing with a keyboard. :)
Posted by: Walt | 03/07/2006 at 08:00 AM
The show is pretty recent. Thw show is called "Game Center CX" and the guy plays lots of old games like "Super Mario Brothers 2 (the hardest one)" every week. I'll get the DVD box when I'm back home and want you to watch it as well.
Posted by: miyagawa | 03/07/2006 at 02:01 PM
O Prince of Persia,
How do I finish the game.
Where did my time go?
Sympathize - I spent WAY too much time on teh original Mac version.
Posted by: jb | 03/09/2006 at 12:35 AM
Regarding infinite patience: I recently bought (purchased, using money) a joystick that has a C64 and ~20 games embedded in it.
Boy was that a mistake.
Even the vaunted Jumpman Jr. turned out to be a lot more tedious than I remembered it.
But, Prince of Persia was a cut above. Skill was measured in pixels, but brilliance was in the hidden panels, the clever puzzles, and the little mouse. Hence I take umbrage at your tidy dismissal.
Fun fact: the Mechners are Go players.
Posted by: The Ez | 03/19/2006 at 10:57 AM
Yah, it seems that most of the early games required a certain unforgiving accuracy in all movement. Maybe that why the pixels were so large. Still we played because, at the time, they were so frickin cool. I remember I had this game on my TRS-80 Color Computer (yes) called "Canyon Climber". The goal was to make your way up to the top of the screen without getting killed by goats, indians (?!) or rocks dropped by birds flying above. It only had three levels (the goat, indian and bird levels) but it took me a long time to finally finish the last level. And what did I get when I finished? I got the first level again, faster! Horray!
Posted by: Garth | 03/19/2006 at 11:17 AM
Oh, Ez, what was the little mouse? I don't remember that? And BTW, I loved the original PoP. I played it religiously till the end. Another all time favorite of mine was "Dark Castle II". The first Dark Castle was fun, but II really opened things up. Maybe I'll make a new post about it just to see if anyone else played it.
Posted by: Garth | 03/19/2006 at 11:19 AM