n 1985 Jordon Mechner was a student at Yale riding high on a mix of euphoria over the surprise success of his first video game, Karateka, and trepidation over the idea of turning that success into a career.
Trading the east coast for the west landed him in the thick of a game industry beginning to realise the potential of the medium. Mechner’s journey from college student to Prince of Persia creator captures they birth of not just an influential video game, but of the industry. Fortunately, Mechner kept a diary. Below you will find a chapter from his eight-year chronicle of life as a developer and the birth of Prince of Persia reprinted with Mechner’s permission. Enjoy. – Ed’s Note
September 10, 1986
[San Francisco ] “I thought you were the pizza man,” Tomi said when she opened the door to the Baker Street apartment and saw me there at the top of the steep steps with my two bags.
Now I’m reclining in luxury in one of their new armchairs, listening to Maurizio Pollini play Chopin preludes on their new CD player. There’s a stunning view of San Francisco Bay out the windows that makes my stomach contract every time I look at it.
Did I mention that I’m scared? Getting a ride to work this morning with Tomi, pulling into the Broderbund parking lot — that was scary.
Now that the day’s over and it’s clear that I had nothing to be scared of, I’m not scared any more — I’m terrified. I’m scared shitless.
I have to rent a car. I have to drive it. On these insane twelve-lane racetracks they call freeways. I have to find an apartment and rent it. I have to move in. I have to buy a car. I have to buy insurance. I’ve never done any of this stuff before… and now I have to do it all at once.
And on top of this — or rather, at the bottom of it — I have to make a computer game.
It’s gonna be fun.
September 11, 1986
Visited Danny Gorlin. He’s sunk more money into developing the development system to end all development systems. Saw the final version of Airheart. It’s got some staggering special effects and it’s no fun at all to play.
Danny thinks spending a million bucks on a development system will give him an edge. He might be right. But the best Apple games have been developed on a plain Apple II with two disk drives. Lucasfilm spent a million bucks to make Rescue on Fractalus and Ball Blazer, and those games aren’t significantly better than, or different from, the competition. The real strides forward — Raster Blaster, Choplifter, (what the hell) Karateka — were the work of solo programmers with no special resources.
Maybe Danny is leading game design into the 21st century. Maybe he’s just flushing money down the toilet.
I’ll stick with my Apple II.
“Everyone in the office has been playing a lot of Tetris… It’s a classic, like Breakout. But I don’t think Broderbund is going to publish it. The knaves.”
September 11, 1986
Met with Gene, Lauren, and Ed Badasov and showed them my Baghdad ideas. (Ed B. made up the working title Prince of Persia.) The storyline didn’t impress them much, but I think they saw promise in it.
It doesn’t really matter a whole lot what they think — I’m the one that has to do it — but it sure as hell wouldn’t hurt to have them enthusiastic. In a few months I should have something to thrill them.
I’m starting to get psyched to write this game. Slowly.
September 12, 1986
Apartment hunting with Steve Patrick. We checked out one place with a pink carpet, dusty chandeliers, and an old-lady landlord who said she doesn’t like renting to kids. “They make a lot of noise,” she said. “They invite their friends over.”
“Not me,” I said. “I just got off the plane from New York. I don’t have any friends.”
“Oh, you will,” she said, ominously, sounding like Yoda in Empire. “You will.”
Steve and Tomi told me I can stay with them until they kick me out.
“You should live in the Marina district,” Doug advised. “You’d meet a lot of… (pause)… yuppies.”
September 18, 1986
Looked at a house in Mill Valley, on a shady road winding through the redwoods. When I rang the doorbell the lady peered around me and said, “Is your mother down there?”
She spent fifteen minutes showing me the house, but I don’t think I ever quite convinced her I was serious.
September 23, 1986
Spent much of today working on the logistical problem of how to get the footage from a VHS tape into the computer. I finally (tentatively) settled on photographing the frames one by one with a regular 35mm camera, getting prints made, then (after retouching as needed) digitising the prints with a regular Sony video camera. It sounds like a pain but I think it’s the best way.
September 25, 1986
Another solid workday. Today I stayed till around 7 and got DRAY pretty much finished. I tested it out by digitising a page out of Muybridge. It’ll do what I need it to do. It could use another day of work. Actually, I could keep working on it for a month, if I didn’t have so much else to do.
September 26, 1986
Ed Bernstein called his last P.D. meeting this afternoon. He’s leaving to head up Broderbund’s fledgling board games division. DOUG HIMSELF will be taking over as acting head of P.D. He’ll be taking my desk, the better to stay in touch with the people. So I’ll be moving into Ed’s office.
Life is strange.
P.D. is throwing Ed a goodbye party. “Better the devil we know than the deep blue sea,” Steve said.
At lunch, Doug said: “You seem to have a very strong entrepreneurial bent.” I was surprised, and said something about how I’d probably inherited it from my father.
Coming out here was definitely the right thing to do. In Chappaqua, I was in a rut. Now, I’m in the thick of it. It’s great.
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