I liked the barefoot version of the Prince from DOS. He seems like he can be hurt easier with no shoes and with just white clothes. Giving him shoes, a vest and a turban makes him seem more like a soldier than a prisoner. He did just get thrown down in a dungeon you know.
"Because no-one can read anymore and would prefer to go on Twitter and post photos of their lunch" First video I've seen of you and I subbed right there.
After scouring the Nintendo e-shops and watching other comparison videos on RU-vid, I am confident that THIS is the most comprehensive for and against lexicon regarding this game. Two parts for PoP 1 and an additional for PoP 2, this helped me get a better appreciation to the game's lineage and performance, hopefully this will help me draw my own opinions based on where I approach the game from here. Excellent videos. EDIT: As I recently learned, "Microids" are still in business, and in 2020 have primarily been publishing physical release versions and ports of some digital only games, such as Asterix XXL, Super Chariot, the Switch ports of the Oddworld series, and most recently the upcoming release of Flashback 2.
18:10 "Jaffar seems to have hired them from the ministry of silly walks" hahah love it And the Amiga version is best for me followed by the new C64 and and then SNES :o)
@@markpenrice6253 Oddly, C64 wasn't an official release. It was ported in recent years by @MrSid6581. I haven't played it on a real C64 since it requires some extra hardware I don't have, but it's still an impressive feat on an emulator.
Picked up the SNES version 15 years ago and only decided to play it this weekend(!). I'm absolutely floored. Sure, it's not exactly the same game, but apart from the tasteful subtlety of the original, everything is retained, while all the additions are mostly in very good taste. The graphics are amazing, and fit the gameplay, while the control scheme is perfectly replicated for the controller, which is much more pleasant to play with than a keyboard. This finale is exciting, and the challenge is quite a bit higher than the original versions, making the 120 minutes quite a tight fit the first few times I went for a full run. Another nice addition that I feel you missed it that the game allows you to go on and practice later stages after the time runs out. Or did the DOS version have that? Maybe I forgot. I LOVE the MS-DOS version, but the SNES version is a masterpiece, and I regret having held out on it for so many years. Additionally, I completely agree that among all the improvements they did, it's a little sad that they did nothing to spruce up the combat. The bosses are just guards with more health, and following a block with an attack works every single time, and so does just pushing the guard up against a wall. That even works in the final boss fight, making the finale a little silly afterall. The only actual "downside" to the port I feel is the password system saving your time, making it way too easy to cheat. They even make up for the lack of gore with a horrible torture scene in the intro.
Thanks for such a great comment :) The SNES version is definitely great, I was amazed to see a port/remake that went so far and worked so well after the lacklustre nature of many of the others!
the Challenges of the SNES Port :-D … you can Leg-it through the game , wi getting Every Secret .. & defeating most Guards on the way .. 01 hr 10 mins .. and it really duz feel ya Acomplished aLot when Completed .. its a Tricky , devious , Perilous feat Runnin' some of those LeveLz where you CANT STOP you just have2 BoLT Across to Make iT … i nearly fell off my seat while trying 2get Across! .. afew weeks and Figured it all 0ut .. and found Loads of Bits you Line-Up with EveryThing Perfectly N Fly Right Through it .. did 'bout a hundred Challengin'Runz ... never Complete in 1 go tho .. haPPy with 2 or 3 goes! … just RUN!!! .. :-S ..00P!!! - *lol , A MAD DUDE LEGGiN' iT ROUND VERY DANGEROUS ENViRONMENTS DRiNKiNG & FiGHTiNG !!!* :-D
0:33 Dos 3:20 Mac 5:12 Apple Macintosh 6:56 NES 9:04 GB 10:02 GBC 10:58 Master System 12:53 Amstrad 14:39 Atari ST 17:03 TGCD 21:02 Megadrive 24:13 Sega CD 27:48 SNES out of all of these I can only choose the NES, SNES, GB/GBC, Master System, TG16, so which one is less terrible?
@9600GTMAN Man, remember when people didn't overuse and abuse the word 'cuck'? And when people were allowed to be political because why shouldn't they be allowed to be? I 'member those days.
@9600GTMAN Politics being in a product is something I don't oppose. If they want to put politics in their product, why would I care to stop them? It's their product, not mine or yours. If it bothers someone, they just won't buy it. There's nothing more to it. Nobody with sense gets mad at the entire Punk genre of music because it's politically charged.
The GBC version did fix some issues, most notably the combat actually working and the skeleton being an actual skeleton. I played the GBC and DOS versions a lot as a kid and the GBC plays noticeably different: - The DOS version moves the prince in quarter tiles, the gameboy version in full tiles. As a result you never really have to line yourself up for a jump like on PC. - An unfortunate effect of the prince not stopping at the edge of things when walking is that he doesn’t stop for chompers either, meaning you have to run/jump through them instead of walk. - A running jump in the GBC version only requires 2 tiles of acceleration. This makes some jumps a lot easier than they were on PC. - There's less momentum involved in the prince's movement in general. - All enemies share the same AI, which makes level 6 a bit pointless. I believe only Jafar is slightly different; he parries more. - Guards are stuck on their platform, they can’t fall off or be pushed off, with the skeleton being the only exception. The player can't be knocked off either. - The potion in level 5 (the one your mirror is supposed to steal) is actually obtainable in the GBC version. - The upside-down potions don’t exist. - Health potions and poison potions are indistinguishable from each other. You simply need to know which are which. - You can’t sneak up on the level 10 guard and thereby skip a huge part of the level. He always turns around, even if you tiptoe your way below him. - Passwords only save the time in minutes. If the clock says :59 after finishing level one, and you use the password you got to load up level 2 you start with exactly 59 minutes left even if level 1 actually took you 1 minute and 59 seconds. The clock works normally between levels otherwise. - Entering an incorrect password kills the prince and restarts the game.
As someone who played the DOS version completly and then played the SNES, the SNES version was a breath of fresh air and turned out to be actually very enjoyable, to me the new levels and old changed levels felt right in an odd way. There was enough of both old and new that kept me glued till the end. edit: I as much as I may love the SNES version, the DOS version is still my favourite
The remake on Xbox 360, Prince of Persia Classic is really good too. It seems to be based on the Mega CD version but has some minor SFC version elements like Jaffar using his staff to attack. You can also jump back off walls both on the ground and the air to reach higher ledges and the fat guy is now a sand brute from warrior within. Another one also gets summoned by Jaffar halfway through the original fight with him, explaining why you fight him again on the balcony outside the Princess’s room. This was the first version of Prince of Persia 1 I played and I judge the other versions by its quality. Another cool thing is slamming the gate in the Dark Prince’s face in level 5 and taking the life extending potion he would have stolen. This doesn’t work in any of the 2D versions: he just clips right through the gate. The horrid and clunky frog hop while crouched is replaced with a forward roll like in the Sands of Time games which is a lot more useful and the Prince is more nimble in general, grabbing higher ledges from further away and pulling up faster. He even does a little tiptoe when walking through extended spikes. After that, there’s time attack mode for speed running and survival mode which has permadeafh. Good for challenge runs. Sword fighting is like the Apple II & DOS versions but with the chance for a small QTE to stun your opponent if you win it, like the 2008 game or more accurately, Warrior Within’s boss fights against Shadee & Kaileena. Harder guards even carry shields albeit mostly for show, explaining why they (such as the level 8 start guard) are so good at playing defence. The iOS port of POP Classic sucks however: the 3D levels are all redone in 2D as are the characters, making everything look weirdly flat compared to even the original 2D versions, sword fights & wall jumps are a lot stiffer and you can no longer do the latter in mid air. The intro text from the 360 version & all original 2D versions was replaced and now reads like a readme file and like the OG Xbox port of the Mac or JP PC (forget which ones) version of the original included as an extra in the console versions of Sands of Time, it has the credits music playing in the main menu. Thankfully no horrible password system like the Xbox port has. Survival and time attack are here too. I was lucky to beat the former in this version and still haven’t in 360. Finally, the Japanese SFC version has extra scenes in the intro showing the Prince getting dragged to his cell and tortured. My Japanese skills aren’t very good so I can’t tell if the intro and ending text was uncensored but the gameplay sadly still is: no blood for us in SFC. Boo! I highly recommend the 360 version of Classic if you don’t have it already. Grab it fast, as the Xbox 360 Marketplace shuts down early next year.
To be honest, I vastly prefer the original PC version over every other. The controls are exactly as they should be, the hit-boxes are correct, the close-tiles are identified, the framerate is always buttery-smooth, and the graphics are simple enough so as not to get in the way. While the SNES version is a good game, it's not the same game. It's not so much a version of Prince of Persia as much as it is a reimagining. When I first goth this (the month of its release), it was because of the excellent Karateka. Thankfully, I was not let down.
I saw this video loooooooong ago and I still watch it to this very day... this is the very first video I saw from you and the one I watch the most... it's just THAT addictive
PC/MS-Dos version of PoP has more varieties than Amiga version but that mainly thanks to more diverse graphics cards that PC could be built with, that supported by the games.
@@rashidisw Ive played both the dos version and Amiga version. Amiga version has better graphics and alot better sound. Pc version was clearly inferior.
Kurt Pedersen Not if you didn't have a sound card. Sound cards were awfully expensive back then, so when the game came out, a lot of people still had beeper speakers on their DOS based PCs
@Kurt Pedersen The Amiga version had a much better sound, using the built-in FM synthesizer. The DOS version on the other hand used PC speaker sound, although it used the noise channel very cleverly to produce better sound than what you would expect from a PC speaker. In terms of graphics, the sprites and backgrounds were technically identical but the color palette was obviously different. The controls on the Amiga were also a bit more responsive.
I remember Prince of Persia at the time it was new, the graphics were truly impressive. They were made by wireframing clips that Jordan Mechner had taken of his kid brother jumping and running around the playground. I also found the fencing animations, though somewhere else. They surfaced in the middle of "The Adventures of Robin Hood" from 1938 starring Errol Flynn. Kid me was delighted when I saw that.
Brilliant video, thanks mate... You can breath now ;) I know I've played a few versions but only ever owned the NES and SNES versions and I enjoyed them both.
first video of yours I've stumbled upon David. You got a few laughs out of me so I instantly subscribed. Shades of Dominik Diamond in this. Delighted to see you've been regularly pumping out videos for the last few years too, I'll be working my way through the back catalog. Smashing that like button now
Still my favorite video on your channel. Must have watched it more than a dozen times over the years. Very informative and entertaining even with the constant need for speed. Shame you couldn't include the NEC PC-98 port here as well since you cover pretty much anything else of consequence. Especially considering it formed the basis for the TG16, SegaCD, Megadrive, Macintosh & the SNES version (made by the same developer) along with the FMTowns and Sharp X68000 versions (pretty much straight ports of it) and all that despite coming out in July 1990 just a couple of months after the DOS, Amiga and Atari ST versions, it is no doubt one of the more important ports and certainly would have deserved to be covered here along with it's many peers. ;) Anyways, thanks for making this video!
Hi, and thanks so much for the in-depth comment! Yes, I couldn't track down the NEC port even though it was the one that really kicked the game into international fame - if it formed the basis for a lot of the other ports then it makes a lot of sense that the Turbografx and SegaCD ones were so similar to each other in particular.
If you think I'm going to sit here, smoke pot, and watch 35 minutes of you taking about the various releases of Prince of Persia then you are damn right.
Thank you for this great video! Very interesting to see all those differences on the different platforms. Prince of Persia for DOS was one of my first games when I was a kid and later I played the SNES version, so I was blessed with two amazing releases! Entertaining commentary!
Thanks so much! The DOS one must have been one of my first games as well, and the SNES one was a nice surprise when I discovered it was so different :)
Indeed. With so many versions, I was happy to learn that I did not miss much at all. If you played the DOS and SNES versions, you basically played every version of PoP1 worth playing. Except I would wish for the DOS version with the MAC high-res graphics, but who wouldn't? Thanks for a great and thorough video.
I remember playing this on the NES and I absolutely loved it. My biggest issue was the frustration of randomly dying (nobody had explained the 1 hour time limit for me, and I wasn't good at english back then).
Amazing video. The only comment I have is that your criticism of the EU Mega Drive version's music is likely due to emulation of the sound chip on the Genesis being notoriously difficult. Thanks for the content!
The Amiga version should have been shown. It's interesting that it and the DOS version share in the design, rather than the Amiga and Atari ST versions. And the it seemed the code wasn't based at all on the ST version. This all would have been good to show.
@@everythingpony definitely not since i'm watching youtube, its just so hard to understand what he's saying because he speaks too fast. Just like james charles. Calm down 🙄
@DavidXNewton I enjoyed it so much! I can't believe I got a comment from the creator... after so many years!!! Great video, I'm going through your others, so you might see my other comments. I'm so glad I found your stuff. It's a.... very hard bit in my life right now
The Sega CD version pronounces the name that way in the cutscenes because they most likely took the script from the Japanese version and translated it back into English. Jafar in Japanese would be pronounced as Jafa.
@@MajkaSrajka When this game came out, anime isn't even as popular as it is now. It's just that they used the Japanese script without the context of the game in English.
24:42 HYAAAHHAAHAA *Joker-like laughter that persists for three hours* I'd expect a shitty cosplayer wrapped in tunic-like cloth acting in front of the camera in the basement as a cutscene for Sega CD game, but THIS, OH MY GOD, this caught me off guard - it looks like a bad anime-ish art from devianart with unbelievably hilarious voice acting being the cherry on top of this cake. T-top notch commentary about the ports, by the way, and excuse me, I need to fix my uncontrollable laughter THAT induced.. hahaha..
Crazy how many versions of this there are, this could be really informative for someone doing a digital hardware or compsci course - a historical look at how hardware and slight changes to programming massively change the experience (the jumping and stepping through spikes and snapping gates must have been frustrating as hell for some people).
My first real game as well, not counting 2 educational games (short anti drug adventure game, and a picking up trash and put it in the right recycling bin game).
The DOS version originally had copy protection (that triggered immediately after the end of level 1), but the various versions you find online have had it removed.
DOS: The college project made with dedication and effort. Apple II: The poor student with limitations that somehow makes a great project nonetheless. Apple ID: He makes a nice effort, albeit is somehow looked down. NES: The guy who probably made the project at last moment. Portable versions: They didn't had much to make it good, yet they at least tried. Amstrad: Good concept of a project albeit having some hiccups. Atari ST: Good project, though he tends to rush out a bit. Turbografx 16: Could use some more annotations and extra features, but it's well made. Genesis: The project looks amazing, but the student couldn't bother optimizing the proccess. Sega CD: Studies his competition and imrpoved upon the project. SNES: The student who's project is so well made it makes you wonder why hasn't been just hired already in professional projects already.
Weird side note: the GameGear version was literally the Master System ROM on a GG cartridge without any conversion done. You can tell because of the weird subpixel color dithering on an actual GG screen as well as a weird glitch where if you remove a Master System game from a GameGear while it's still on, the screen scales back up to 1:1 and crops off the edges; any GG game that does this is actually a Master System game without any conversion. Now I'm curious if there were other GG games like this.
That's interesting, I had no idea - I had always thought that the Game Gear and Master System formats were identical, just with the hardware scaled down!
@@DavidXNewton They're almost identical, but the GameGear added stereo panning to the PSG, expanded the color pallette to 4096, and obviously had a lower resolution as well, which is why the screen can look a little odd when playing MS titles on it. It was something I noticed way back in 1995 by accident when ripping PoP out of my GameGear, but I was never able to explain it until many years later.
Only recently been viewing a few of your videos and I actually adore PoP as a series and this is well done. It helps you have a very contagious sense of humor, 20:54 💀
Sega version is amazing: 3 additional levels, brilliant music (one of the best) and especially the final stage music gives you an idea that you are approaching sth evil. For control, you’ll get a knack of it. Graphics is neat.
This was a good video!...I had no idea there were so many different versions, I'm glad that I had the best version where the skeleton and douple ganger did what they were meant to do!...(PC version)
Me too :) I think if I'd known this game through th NES or Master System, I would have given up and known it as a very broken and frustrating game, which it doesn't deserve at all!
There was a version for the Sam Coupé 8 bit computer in 1990 which is one of very few proper commercial games for it. Sadly few people bought the computer so most companies ignored the machine. A bit of a cycle of apathy...
Strangely, the Sam Coupé port of Prince of Persia was made as a completely independent, unlicensed version with graphics ripped from the Amiga version. The programmer (Chris White) THEN approached the licence holders with a completed game, and it was so good that they decided to publish it.
You've made a very comprehensive presentation of these versions. I grew up with the PC version and I feel pretty lucky, seeing the bugs and downfalls of some of the other ports. The SNES is also very good and it shows the developers respected the original and enhanced it too.
With POP, I remember there was a coin op version back in the 80's. I used to go to places like the Braintree mall & Liberty Tree Mall & amongst the other coin ops was a POP one.
As someone who played the Macintosh version on the intended hardware, I can confirm the slower pace, but I never had any of the combat issues you speak of. Just mash attack and block and you win every fight. Dunno if the other versions worked that way, the Mac did. Also, my mac version had copy protection as well much like the Atari one. I was always surprised that the other versions of PoP never looked as nice as the 1992 Macintosh one did. The ] vivid color palette and perfect music always made it stand out. At least for me.
Xanthosking Yes, the Mac one looks great! PC hardware of the time was still some way away from SVGA as standard, and the 8-bit consoles were really limited in comparison.
Lots of recent comments, so I guess RU-vid's algorithms decided to give this a boost. I'm glad, because this has long been one of my favourite games, and this video was both hilarious and highly informative. Only now do I realise how lucky I was to play the PC and Mac versions as a kid rather than one of the many terrible ports. It seems like Ubisoft included the Mac version, or an approximation of it, as an Easter Egg in the Sands of Time. Something to look at if you ever decide to update this video!
Yes, I'm really glad that I got to play one of the good ones as well - I see so many people remembering the game for its terrible controls because they played it on one of the consoles!
Good vid and you deserve more attention. BUT you really need to slow down your speech. You talk pretty damn fast and I seriously had to play the vid at 0.75x speed to completely understand some parts
Thank you! Yes, a few people said I was talking too fast and I've tried to tone it down in recent videos - in the Prince of Persia 2 one I tried to rein myself in a bit :)
As a child i only played the snes and DOS version, when i tried the genesis version i got mad but i never imagined that there were a lot of crappy ports out there, great video!
One of my prouder gaming achievements is beating this game before age 10 (having practiced on the Gameboy) on my uncle's, already by then, ancient work computer (DOS version). While it's a classic have to say idk how to feel about the time aspect. It makes it unnecessarily difficult imho; you HAVE to know the game beforehand so you can beat it within he time limit. Other than that it's pretty amazing that it's worth playing to this day.
I don't know why this was recommended to me. I don't know why I clicked this. I don't know why I watched the whole video . I didn't even play Prince of Persia !!!
There was an old version unlockable in the Gamecube version of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (at east it was there in the PAL release). I can't remember if it was the DOS or Apple II version though. EDIT: It seems to be the Apple II version and apparently it's unlockable in all console versions of The Sands of Time.
The mac version is the one I played as a kid and it's the best one in my opinion. It has the best graphics. The Dos version doesn't look great at all. Everything just look...less
FYI 26:41 .. This is actually the correct pronunciation of the name "Ja'far", which means something like a small stream. This was the only version that nailed it.
