{"id":36296,"date":"2012-04-18T17:02:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T15:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=36296"},"modified":"2012-04-18T17:06:34","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T15:06:34","slug":"jordan-mechner-releases-original-prince-of-persia-source-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/36296-jordan-mechner-releases-original-prince-of-persia-source-code","title":{"rendered":"Jordan Mechner releases original Prince of Persia source code"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After finding the original Prince of Persia Apple II source code in a box last month and working out some way to extract the info from three Cretaceous Period 3.5&#8243; disks, Jordan Mechner has released it to the public.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;<\/strong>Let me begin to count the ways I\u2019ve been lucky with this: The box was found. The disks were intact. Prince of Persia and I happened to have a high enough public profile that people of Jason [Scott, digital archivist] and Tony [Diaz, Apple II collector]&#8217;s caliber (and dozens of others who contributed their expertise via IRC, skype and twitter from around the world) cared,&#8221; Mechner wrote on his blog.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_35185\" style=\"width: 570px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II-screenshot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-35185\" class=\"size-full wp-image-35185\" title=\"Prince of Persia Apple II screenshot\" src=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II-screenshot.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II-screenshot.jpg 560w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II-screenshot-300x205.jpg 300w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II-screenshot-250x171.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-35185\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Prince of Persia Apple II screenshot<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;In the bigger picture, our timing was lucky. The 1980s and the Apple II are long enough ago to be of historical interest, yet recent enough that the people who put the data on the disks are still with us, and young enough to kind of remember how we did it. Roland Gustafsson, author of the special 18-sector RWTS routines that had made our disks super-efficient in 1988 (and unreadable to anyone but us), was able to get on IRC in 2012 and explain what he\u2019d done to Discferret kids who weren\u2019t born then.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For all these lucky reasons, our archaeological expedition was crowned with success.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_32511\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Jordan-Mechner-at-his-Apple-.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-32511\" class=\" wp-image-32511\" title=\"Jordan Mechner at his Apple ][\" src=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Jordan-Mechner-at-his-Apple-.jpg\" alt=\"Jordan Mechner at his Apple ][\" width=\"600\" height=\"460\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Jordan-Mechner-at-his-Apple-.jpg 600w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Jordan-Mechner-at-his-Apple--300x230.jpg 300w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Jordan-Mechner-at-his-Apple--250x191.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-32511\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jordan Mechner at his Apple<\/p><\/div>Now you can grab the code from <a href=\"http:\/\/github.com\/jmechner\/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II\" target=\"_blank\">Github<\/a>and make your own Prince of Persia clone, then back it up to a flash disk and lose it, and find it again in a box 22 years later, and feel the same way Mechner did.<\/p>\n<h5>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/jordanmechner.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/source\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jordan Mechner<\/a><\/h5>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Related article<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Karateka reboot: Q&amp;A with Jordan Mechner\" href=\"..\/features\/32509-karateka-reboot-qa-with-jordan-mechner.html\">Karateka reboot: Q&amp;A with Jordan Mechner<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Jordan Mechner revives Karateka\" href=\"..\/news\/32415-jordan-mechner-revives-karateka.html\">Jordan Mechner revives Karateka<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Jordan Mechner\u2019s The Last Express announced for iOS revamp\" href=\"..\/news\/34394-jordan-mechners-the-last-express-announced-for-ios-revamp.html\">Jordan Mechner\u2019s The Last Express announced for iOS revamp<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Once upon a time, John Romero wrote a fan letter to Jordan Mechner\" href=\"..\/news\/33359-once-upon-a-time-john-romero-wrote-a-fan-letter-to-jordan-mechner.html\">Once upon a time, John Romero wrote a fan letter to Jordan Mechner<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Jordan Mechner finds original Prince of Persia Apple II source code in a box\" href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/35158-jordan-mechner-finds-original-prince-of-persia-apple-ii-source-code-in-a-box.html\">Jordan Mechner finds original Prince of Persia Apple II source code in a box<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A little piece of gaming history uncovered and released to the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":32513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31,3049,2367,2369,2368],"class_list":["post-36296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-active","tag-broderbund","tag-jordan-mechner","tag-karateka","tag-prince-of-persia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36305,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36296\/revisions\/36305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}