There was also an Android port that has disappeared from the play store that is based on the look and feel of the PC version, including a few mods. It wasn't too bad actually. Thank you for another look into this game that is somehow still very fascinating to this day!
While it is an easier way to have access to the Mac version, it is just another port of an existinh version, much like the one in Sands of Time. But good catch.
The ingenuity of fan made homebrew porters to get games as complex as Prince of Persia to run on systems that it had no right being able to run on, never ceases to amaze me.
Man, I've just discovered your channel because I wanted to look at some Prince of Persia ports and here I am now, at 3 AM, watching an hour long video about some obscure ports of the game. I hope you'll create something of a similiar fashion in the future, for I will gladly burn the midnight oil yet again.
I had to up the speed to 1.25x to make it sound like your original 2014 video. (In all seriousness, glad you came back to this, your PoP videos are my favorites.)
The FM Towns actually has CD quality music in all its dungeons. It's sad you didn't get that version. The first time I downloaded that game was the one with sounds but no music. I'm glad I never give up and found the complete version.
FM Towns games with CD remastered soundtracks remain some of the best available for their respective games. Shadow of the Beast 1 and 2 remain some of my absolute favourites alongside Lemmings 2, so good on you for looking hard for the music included version.
I think the best takeaway from regularly revisiting these stumbling tours is it convinced me to chase down what I thought would be the most ideal way to enjoy this classic adventure: 1) the Mac port included in Forgotten Sands (Wii) and Sands of Time 2) the Classic remake to enjoy the boldest attempt to reimagine the title 3) and SDLPoP to play the game as close to its DOS release and enjoy the ever growing community of modders akin to what exists for DOOM. Still, seeing the predecessor to the Acorn Archimedes running PoP1 is beyond impressive, and in a world where so many games analogous to this missed the entire BBC computer line, seeing the Prince gracing it was a welcome surprise.
I absolutely loved your Prince videos, glad to see you are giving them a bit more attention and that you listened to the feedback, although your fast spaced speech was somewhat amusing. Keep it up mate.
It must be a close contest as to which has been ported to the most systems, between Doom and Prince of Persia. I think the only thing that would give Doom the edge is the number of insane ports to photocopiers and toasters.
I've seen videos already of people comparing various Doom ports, but never with the goal of an exhaustive exploration of all official ports. Digital Foundry and Punching Weight have each done videos on console ports, but I'm not sure about ports to other computers. I also think digging into unofficial ports, particularly if you can find any made before the engine was open sourced, would make for an interesting video. Ports after that would mostly just be of the "can we get Prboom to run on this Greek water clock?" variety.
I tried limiting my exploration of DOOM to MS-DOS ports. Still got confused. Strangely, original version runs fastest, despite all later "improvements", which is VERY noticeable on my Pentium 133. John Carmack was a coding god!
Áron Aranyossy They were definitely enthusiastic about it :) I think there was another port started on the Enterprise 128 in Hungary, another computer I don’t know about. I hope I got the Hungarian names even close to right :)
@@DavidXNewton the FM Towns version does include Redbook Audio, so you did miss out on it. It’s the same music as it was in the Turbografx version, which is what the SEGA CD version based it on.
@@DavidXNewton The Japanese Ports are the reason why Jordan Mechner redid the graphics for the Mac Port (the graphics to the Mac Port is nearly identical to the Japanese Ports, just Americanized), and how the Prince looked different in the sequel compared to earlier installments of the first Prince of Persia (where the Prince looks too Caucasian to be considered a Prince nor a Persian).
I hope RU-vid algorithms continue to push your video, as they are great. I'm one of them lonely Sam Coupe users from the 80s and I spent hours playing Prince of Persia but never beat it!
Both PoP videos got me to subscribe. I love all the videos I've seen on your channel so far! :) I suppose my top 5 versions overall would be SNES, PC-98, IBM PC/DOS, Macintosh, and Sega CD.
The C64 and BBC Master versions are extremely impressive simply for existing in any recognizable form, let alone being actually pretty good taking hardware limitations into account
Another excellent video, DavidXNewton; your channel is quickly becoming one of my regular go-tos when I want to pass the time with some vintage (and well put together) video game coverage. Oddly, watching POP being played and compared on different systems is oddly therapeutic (maybe it's something to do with the grid-based play or something). I inherited Price of Persia on the PC when by dad "borrowed" a 386 from work along with a random pile of (ahem) unofficial games circa 1991/2-ish. Although I was/am more into 'thinking' type games, it had such an awesome combination of action and puzzles (and great graphics) that I loved it. I vaguely recall it was possibly an 'enhanced' (likely hacked) version, with various pokes and extras. To this day it stands out in so many areas. The BBC B was my computer as a boy; I still have it, and is still one of my big loves in my life. I'm aware of the unofficial port of POP in the last year or so. I'm of the odd breed that only really enjoy games on old systems that were released for them at the time - for some reason knowing that it's a modern game for an old system, I just can't fully get into it. Even so, the Beeb version looks really good ... I want to sound very pompous and say I'm not surprised, as whilst the Been may have been limited with graphics (particularly palette-wise), "under-the-hood" is could be quite powerful when programmed right. Loving these Stumbling Tours videos, they're some of your best stuff. Would love to see you cover some of the classic point-and-click series.
Huh, this is a pleasant surprise. I was one of these people who was blessed by algorythm, and decided to stay, really liked "stumbling" series and your Doom videos. That ZX Spectrum port had reminded me about gaming in post-soviet Russia in middle of the 90's. I clearly remember, what over here, sometime around year 1996-98, I was visiting several gaming-centric shops quite a lot, and I could always find at the same shelf, same time and place: NES (pirated copy, more similar to Famicom), Sega Megadrive (pirated, too) and ZX Spectrum-looking machine. Also PS1 a bit later, but that besides the point. Now I realize, what that was a bit bizarre. Come to think of it, ZX Spectrum probably become popular in Russia a bit before this ZX Spectrum port (well, in it's cloned form, with defferent name), around the same time as before mentioned systems: NES, Sega, and PS1 followed several years later. Most likely because of political climate at the time, I was possible to profit from piracy and everything crackable started to emerge after 1991. What a time it was. Really glad it's gone. Most of clones and pirated systems were rubbish, broke easily, games were sold but often didn't work properly. But at least it itroduced people like me to gaming. So... yay for piracy? Yay for piracy.
I just played the Atari port on 130xl/xe emulator. Brilliant. Though tends to slow down with more objects in the screen. However perfectly playable and was able to finish it on the first run.
I think the age at which I could have started playing Prince of Persia is long past. I'm not really interested in picking it up and playing it, but I love studying it's design, watching people who are passionate about it play it and talk about it. I'm having loads of fun with these videos.
I have this with POP2. My first game ever was Pop1 and I at least finished this game 3 times. I tried starting pop about 3 times but never got past the 3rd maybe 4th level.
Since the release of this video, there's been yet another addition to the mad porting frenzy, this time to the Atari XE. I would love to see a small playthrough and impressions vid of that port, if possible.
My equivalent to Prince of Persia on DOS for you is the Xbox 360 version of Prince of Persia Classic, which I use as a benchmark for all the others despite it being a remake. In descending order of quality under POP Classic, my top versions of the game are: Mega CD version (Japanese, because the English dub of the cutscenes is horrible as you rightly pointed out) PC 98 & PC Engine (similar to above but no voice acting) DOS Apple II Super Family Computer aka Super Famicom/SFC (Japanese only for uncensored torture scenes) I rank the SFC version as the worst because despite being basically Prince of Persia’s version of Sabatu’s Kaizo Tomb Raider series with a lot of new stuff that is indeed worth playing, I can’t stand the censorship of blood, gore & references to death, plus I can’t understand the Japanese text so I can’t tell if unlike SNES version nor the gore in all regions it was untainted.
Prince of Persia Classic is such a strange game; a collection of "promising-turned-disastrous". It is as if it was made by a "twisted genie with a grudge", as you so cleverly put it. It gives the Prince a lot of useful new moves, such as jumping off of walls, rolling, and catching ledges. It also adds ridiculous things such as backflips, and barely tweaks the environments in response to the expanded repertoire, trivializing some of the platforming. It reworks the simplistic combat, introducing flashy finishers and new actions. All of that wasted on the subpar execution of such combat system, including slow-mo, resulting in fleeing being the preferred option, not out of fear, but out of frustration. It makes the movement more responsive and snappy, instantaneous. It also removes edge detection, reduces jump run-up time, and makes the Prince feel weightless, an aspect integral to the original game. There are a few things to be said about the graphics and the change of direction, but I won't say anything about them. It just makes me wonder if there was ever a cohesive idea for what the game should've been, or if a lot of things changed during development to fit what "consumers would want".
Ahh those Amiga crack screens were a thing of beauty :) great video could listen to your commentary all day, is this the same bloke from the dos game club podcast??
I couldn't read most of the Kanji, but the Japanese menu at 14:36 reads approximately ゲームスタート データロード ドライブ?? サウンド?? ?晶モード ユーザーデイスク?? 名前の登? ?生モード デモに戻る gēmusutāto dētarōdo doraibu?? saundo?? ?akiramōdo yūzādeisuku?? namae no tō? ?Nama mōdo demo ni modoru Game Start Data loading drive?? sound?? Crystal mode User disk? Name registration? ? Raw mode Return to demo (...according to Google Translate.)
I think you missed one. Whilst not a port of this, its still in the classic style. There was a flash game released in 2003 to help promote Sand Of Time, that contained one brand new dungeon level and a fight with Jaffar at the end.
“Looks like I’m gonna be a moderately popular gaming RU-vidr, so you can probably expect me to say something horribly racist in the near future.” That is fucking hilarious. Edit: oh but yeah I found your channel through your Prince of Persia video a month or two ago, and I dig your content. Definitely looking forward to more. 👍
As much as I like the remake (the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, that is), I do agree the combat is rather brutal and unforgiving. I still wish there was a remake of PoP 2, though. And I mean a proper one, not what we got on mobile!
Concerning the Amiga version, I think you choose a wrong option to switch from 50 to 60hz or your emulator doesn't do the job very well. Indeed, you see the things right. As Prince Of Persia has been developed by Broderbund in the United States, the game is designed to be displayed in 60hz. On a real Amiga, music and sound aren't affected in 60hz, GFX retrieve their correct aspect ratio and the animation is smoother and faster. A shame that people (me included) played the game in 50hz at the wrong speed in Europe. A simple option to choose to start the game at 50 or 60hz at the beginning (like in Fury Of The Furries for example) would have been simple. But it's another history 😄
I assume the SDLpop review isn't up yet? How do you know it's not the emulators that are messing up the ports? I'm playing Q*Bert on DosBox and it's not as nice as it ran on native DOS.
Then you really have been around a long time :D I can't believe it's been so many years since Moa graced us with the madness of the Hatoful series... glad you're still watching!
I'd be into watching DavidXNewton do a longplay of his preferred DOS version of Prince of Persia just talking about it. Like not even a speed run, just...sit down and play the game and talk.
Gosh the x68k port. I beat it and the PC-98 version multiple times, and while the x68k is closer to the original in terms of movement and combat, the PC-98 ver is more stable (especially with performance and framelimiting) and customizable. PC-98 ver would've been basically perfect if some movement quirks weren't made super annoying, and combat moves weren't buffered and infinitely looping if the buttons were held down. Also it's a self-booter game, not a PC-98 DOS game...that made it even more annoying to get running on my real PC-9821, *plus* it requires a second user disk. Hope you have multiple floppies or a floppy emulator. The x68k port doesn't have this problem as it's a Human68k game, and all 3 disks can be copied to a single HDD and ran from the commandline. Also I may be one of the few who dig the x68k OST over the PC-98 OST. PC-98 is more atmospheric and has better FM/SSG instrument design, but I like the more energetic and twangy x68k OST.
18:13 This is actually an FM Towns issue, not the X68000. The shift works just fine. It's the FM Towns where you need to use the spacebar. You probably got your FM Towns notes mixed up with your X68000 notes. Or maybe there's something wrong with my FM Towns emulator and something wrong with your X68000 emulator. And yes, there is CD music in the FM Towns version but you've already heard it because it's the same as the TurboGrafx CD
Heh. Funny reading Russian. As far as I remember, FM Towns do have CD quality music. It definitely sounds much better that X68000 and maybe have similar quality to Sega CD port. For some reason can't play my CD on emulator right now, but it's 100% have great music. It's strange how they've changed music in Sega CD where palace music plays during dungeon levels and vice versa.
DavidXNewton On your run-in towards the sword, the room before you arrive to where the sword is located, there’s a loose tile on top before you jump the spike trap, make the loose tile fall then go up and take a left. The life expanding potion is there for the taking. This extra room also exists in the DOS version but it only contains a regular healing potion
DavidXNewton The PC-98 also introduces another life expanding potion in level 3 but it’s a trap if you choose to get it. To find it, instead of going left towards the end level door after taking care of the skeleton, head right then go down. The life potion is on a lower level but if you fall to get it, the first tile will fall trapping you because you can’t get back up and if you go down where the tile fell, you’ll meet a skeleton and you’ll fight him for the time remaining unless you choose to die
I think it takes the bronze medal for third place behind Doom and the original Pac Man. Rayman or James Pond 2 might be close contenders, but I think PoP just inches ahead of both.
I love these comparison videos but you really need to include the version that was unlockable with Sands of Time on the PS2/GameCube/Xbox versions (Xbox version included PoP2 as well although the unlockable classics unfortunately don't get along with the 360) as that is probably the version most people can legitimately have access to aside from PoP Classic (which a different beast altogether), especially considering how little second hand copies of 6th gen Sands of Time go for these days. Do it, man!!
