Prince of Persia

• 1. Introduction

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  Jordan Mechner asked his own brother to play the Prince. For the 1989 game Prince of Persia, Mechner used his brother as the model for the title character. The animation was then built with a technique called rotoscoping, which draws movement from a real performer.

  That choice launched the Prince of Persia franchise. It is a series of action-adventure games about various incarnations of one Prince, set in ancient and medieval Persia. Over the decades the series moved between publishers, changed its look, and sometimes went quiet for years.

  Why did a series with such acclaimed games keep starting over? Who decided each new direction, and who objected? And how did the ideas of one Prince end up inside a very different franchise?

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• 2. From Karateka To Dreamcast

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  Karateka was the hit that came before everything else. Its success gave Jordan Mechner the footing to create Prince of Persia, which Broderbund published in 1989. Mechner drew on the One Thousand and One Nights stories, and on the films Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Adventures of Robin Hood. The game was ported to more than 20 platforms, which makes it one of the most ported games in video game history.

  New York University's film department was Mechner's next stop. He enrolled there and produced an award-winning short film, then returned to design and direct a sequel. Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame arrived in 1993. It was developed internally at Broderbund under his supervision. Like the first game, it earned critical acclaim and high sales.

  Broderbund was later purchased by The Learning Company, which was in turn acquired by the American game company Mattel Interactive. In 1999 Prince of Persia 3D appeared under Broderbund's Red Orb label. It took its name from being the first installment to use 3D computer graphics. Red Orb Entertainment developed it, and The Learning Company published the PC version.

  The Dreamcast version had a different pair of companies behind it. Avalanche Software developed it and Mattel Interactive published it. The game came out only on PC and Dreamcast. Many users criticized it as buggy, and it was a commercial disappointment.

  The games division of Broderbund and The Learning Company, which held the franchise among its assets, was then sold to Ubisoft. Ubisoft bought the rights in 2001. Mechner, who owned the Prince of Persia intellectual property, was about to be brought back in.

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• 3. The Sands Of Time

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  Mechner arrived at Ubisoft wary after the failure of Prince of Persia 3D, yet he agreed to work on a reboot titled The Sands of Time. It came out in 2003. The team around him was also working on Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell. Their stated aim was to "breathe new life into the action-adventure genre".

  Prince of Persia: Warrior Within followed in 2004, and this time Mechner took no part in the production. He commented that he found its dark atmosphere and heightened violence unappealing. Critics reacted to the changes with mixed opinions, but sales were strong. That success sent a third game into production, eventually titled The Two Thrones.

  For The Two Thrones in 2005, the developers and artists tried to strike a balance. One side was the light, cartoon-like tone of The Sands of Time. The other was the grittier look of Warrior Within.

  In May 2010 Ubisoft released a fourth installment, The Forgotten Sands, as a tie-in to the film adaptation of The Sands of Time. The Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions filled in part of the narrative gap between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within. The PSP, Wii and DS versions each told their own alternative storylines.

  The Prince of Persia Trilogy gathered The Sands of Time, Warrior Within and The Two Thrones into one collection. The title screen of the remastered edition reads Prince of Persia Trilogy 3D. The PlayStation 2 collection reached Europe on the 27th of October 2006. The high-definition remaster for PlayStation 3 followed on the 19th of November 2010, on a single Blu-ray disc with 3D and trophy support. It was the first Classics HD title not published by Sony Computer Entertainment.

  In North America the three games first appeared separately as downloads on the PlayStation Store. The Sands of Time came on the 16th of November 2010, and the other two followed in December. The Blu-ray was planned for the 22nd of March 2011 and slipped to the 19th of April.

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• 4. Reboots And Spin-offs

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  Concept designs surfaced in 2006 that hinted at yet another entry. The game, titled simply Prince of Persia, was a second reboot of the franchise. Its level and combat design looked back to the original 1989 game. It was released in December 2008, earned positive reviews from most outlets, and sold decently.

  Ubisoft's Casablanca branch built a companion for the Nintendo DS alongside it. Prince of Persia: The Fallen King was a direct sequel and spin-off, and it received fair reviews.

  Battles of Prince of Persia was the first spin-off of the series. It was developed alongside The Two Thrones and released in the same year, 2005, for the Nintendo DS. This turn-based strategy game is set between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within. Critics gave it mediocre reviews.

  Gameloft supplied a long line of mobile titles. Its first spin-off was Prince of Persia: Harem Adventures, released for Java phones in 2003. Some Gameloft games were based on older PC or console titles with 2D graphics. Others were loosely based on contemporary games, with different gameplay because of technology constraints.

  In 2007 Gameloft and Ubisoft released Prince of Persia Classic, an enhanced remake of the original game. Gameloft Montreal developed it for platforms including Java ME, Android, iOS, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Its look was upgraded to resemble The Sands of Time. The Prince gained new moves: rolling, backflipping, wall jumping and briefly stopping time in combat. The core stayed the same. The player must defeat Jaffar within one hour while avoiding traps and guards.

  Gameloft Pune, a studio that now belongs to Ubisoft, produced an HD remake of The Shadow and the Flame in July 2013.

  Ubisoft released Prince of Persia: Escape in 2018 under the banner of its Ketchapp entity. It is a runner for Android and iOS, and players can dress the protagonist in outfits from past games. Reviewing for Pocket Gamer, Cameron Bald called it a "mundane game crushed under the weight of excessive greed". A follow-up, Escape 2, arrived in August 2022.

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• 5. Back To Platforming

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  In January 2024 Ubisoft released Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, the first major installment since The Forgotten Sands. It is a 2.5D side-scrolling platformer with a new storyline. Its protagonist is Sargon, a member of the Immortals.

  The Rogue Prince of Persia reached players on the 20th of August 2025. Evil Empire developed this 2.5D roguelike for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Cloud and PC. On PC it was available through Ubisoft Connect, Steam and the Epic Games Store. Versions for Switch 2 and Switch were planned for later in 2025.

  Development began around 2019, after a discussion between Evil Empire and Ubisoft at GDC. The art direction is heavily inspired by Franco-Belgian comics. For Ubisoft, it was the first day-one Steam release in five years. It was also the company's first title released in Early Access before a full release.

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• 6. Games That Never Arrived

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  Leaked images from a project called Osiris surfaced in 2012, and many assumed they showed the next Prince of Persia. Jordan Mechner said on his Twitter account that the images were not from a Prince of Persia game. A year later Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, said the franchise was being "paused". He added: "as soon as we have something to show, we will". In the following months Ubisoft confirmed it was planning or considering next-generation entries in multiple franchises, Prince of Persia among them.

  A video uploaded by a Ubisoft Montreal artist in 2012 went unnoticed until 2020. It showed a gameplay trailer for Prince of Persia Redemption, which would have come to Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Jonathan Cooper, a former Ubisoft animator, explained that Khai Nguyen made the trailer as a mockup of planned gameplay. It was used to pitch the concept. The game never developed beyond that point, though the pitch work helped prepare a similar trailer for Assassin's Creed III.

  A remake of The Sands of Time was formally announced at Ubisoft Forward 2020. It was scheduled for the 21st of January 2021 on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but Ubisoft delayed it indefinitely. A quarterly financial report then placed it sometime in the 2022-23 fiscal year. Development moved to Ubisoft Montréal, away from Ubisoft Mumbai and Ubisoft Pune.

  Ubisoft later said the 2023 fiscal year release target was no longer being pursued. A new release window of 2026 was announced at Ubisoft Forward 2024. Ubisoft officially canceled the remake on the 21st of January 2026, as it announced a major restructuring of the company. That date matches the day the game had originally been set to launch five years earlier.

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• 7. Beyond The Console

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  Jordan Mechner finished writing the story for a Prince of Persia graphic novel in 2007. A.B. Sina wrote the book, and Alex Puvilland and LeUyen Pham illustrated it. First Second Books released it in autumn 2008. It follows two Princes and jumps between the 9th and 13th centuries. Although it belongs to the franchise, its plot is unrelated to any of the game continuities or to the 2010 film.

  Disney brought the franchise to cinemas in 2010 with a film adaptation of The Sands of Time. Jake Gyllenhaal starred as Prince Dastan. Reception was mixed, yet the film grossed $336 million in theaters. It also borrowed elements from Warrior Within and The Two Thrones.

  Before the Sandstorm, a 2010 one-shot comic from Disney Publishing Worldwide, accompanied the film's release. It serves as both a direct prequel and sequel to the movie, and it explains the motives and backgrounds of some characters. Mechner wrote it. Todd McFarlane, Niko Henrichon, David Lopez and Bernard Chang provided the illustrations.

  The Lego Group released Lego Prince of Persia in 2010, as part of a strategy to produce sets based on Disney properties. The sets were based on the feature film. Lego released six sets and a short animated film before discontinuing the theme.

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• 8. Legacy And Echoes

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  Guinness World Records awarded the series six world records in its Gamer's Edition 2008. They include First Motion-Capture Animation in a Video Game and Highest Rated Platformer on PS2 and Xbox.

  South Korean singer-songwriter Kim Kwang-Jin released a song called "Magic Castle", with lyrics inspired by the storyline of the original game. In 1992 the Russian author Victor Pelevin published A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories. One tale in it, "Prince of Gosplan", is greatly influenced by the game. Its hero lives in a mixed reality of the real world and video games and calls himself Prince of Persia. He tries to work out whether his life is real or just something he sees on a computer display.

  The gameplay feel of Tomb Raider was intended to evoke that of the original Prince of Persia.

  The largest offshoot is the Assassin's Creed series, now considered the franchise's spiritual successor. It grew out of ideas for a sequel to The Sands of Time. That game's critical and financial success led Ubisoft to ask Ubisoft Montreal for a follow-up aimed at the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The team decided to take the gameplay into an open world. Improved processing power would let them render larger spaces and crowds.

  The story needed a different shape too. The team wanted to move away from a Prince who is next in line for the throne but must work for it. Research into secret societies led them toward the Assassins, and they borrowed heavily from the novel Alamut. The player would control an Assassin serving as bodyguard to a Prince who could not be played. They called this game Prince of Persia: Assassin.

  The "Animus" device let them explain facets of gameplay, such as what happens when a player fails a mission. The team had solved that problem the same way in The Sands of Time.

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