Struggling through Prince of Persia
Oct. 25th, 2011 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnThis one's been a while in the making, largely because my plan for it turned out to be a little ambitious. For this video, I was determined to complete the NES version of Prince of Persia, as it's been one of my favourite games ever since I first played it in the mid-90s - on the DOS version, I can breeze through it in under twenty minutes.
Unfortunately, I was only to discover the NES version's comparative dreadfulness through playing it - it casts off the cut-scenes, responsiveness of the controls, and many key parts of the game, making me think that it must have been made by people who were a bit pressed for time. But I persisted - and the resulting experience makes it one of the parts of this experiment that, rather opposite from the jealousy of console-owning friends I had at that age, made me very glad that I grew up with the PC instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zaxWD0BVSs
This is a fairly huge video, and it's been edited down from its original running time of upwards of one hour - I imagine that it's only interesting to watch the whole way through if you're familiar with the PC version of the game and can appreciate the differences as I get caught out by them. You get about seven minutes of unbroken gameplay, and then I start being a bit more liberal with my time-altering superpowers. It features:
Good luck. If you decide to stick with it through the whole 45 minutes, you'll need it.
Unfortunately, I was only to discover the NES version's comparative dreadfulness through playing it - it casts off the cut-scenes, responsiveness of the controls, and many key parts of the game, making me think that it must have been made by people who were a bit pressed for time. But I persisted - and the resulting experience makes it one of the parts of this experiment that, rather opposite from the jealousy of console-owning friends I had at that age, made me very glad that I grew up with the PC instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zaxWD0BVSs
This is a fairly huge video, and it's been edited down from its original running time of upwards of one hour - I imagine that it's only interesting to watch the whole way through if you're familiar with the PC version of the game and can appreciate the differences as I get caught out by them. You get about seven minutes of unbroken gameplay, and then I start being a bit more liberal with my time-altering superpowers. It features:
- Twelve excruciating levels
- Four thousand retakes
- Three thousand and ninety-nine instances of me saying "Right!" overconfidently after a retake
- Even more bizarre exasperated noises (coming soon as a Best Of collection)
- Nearly melting the bleep machine
- The same eight bars of music repeated for all eternity (cut out during editing in this video - you're welcome)
- Skeletons where they shouldn't be
- Lack of other objects where there should be
Good luck. If you decide to stick with it through the whole 45 minutes, you'll need it.
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Date: 2011-10-26 10:57 am (UTC)It's your best yet. Hilarious, well-edited, just the right mix of expertise and cluelessness (obviously something that can't really be engineered, but it bears mention anyway), longer than usual, demonstrative of confidence and wit and just generally fun and interesting to watch.
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Date: 2011-10-26 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-26 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-26 11:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-27 07:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-27 01:15 pm (UTC)All games programmes have been a bit maligned, throughout history, even in the era when they were the only way to show game footage instead of still screenshots - there was the sort of golden age of Bad Influence and Gamesmaster, but even those were cultish at best.
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Date: 2011-10-27 05:40 pm (UTC)That is not suprising about the log fire and often think they should do something similar rather than just a test screen when the channels close (much like BBC2 with ceefax).
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Date: 2011-10-27 07:21 pm (UTC)Does the BBC still drop to some Ceefax-equivalent even now - even though I know the BBC Micro that used to broadcast it has been retired?
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Date: 2011-10-28 05:48 am (UTC)And it is not even just for children though where you would expect them to have imagination. Crystal Maze, Scavengers, Fort Boyard (hmmm Europeans tend to do it this way then). The more recent one, that I saw was Don't Scare the Hare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GSM5pqAZlQ) which pits the wits of people against a giant robotic hare and this was shown on Saturday evening! So yeah, I get your point.
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Date: 2011-10-30 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-31 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 11:41 pm (UTC)At the other end of the scale, someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to have him presenting a hospital documentary.
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Date: 2011-10-27 03:30 am (UTC)Did you find the height (or duration) of his upwards jump to be a bit odd and short? I don't remember much about this game, but I do remember hopping around trying to haul my way up, or shake loose a ceiling tile above me, so that animation stuck in my brain...
What kinds of things were wrong with the other console PoPs you tried?
According to an FAQ I found, there IS no way to tell which ones are poisonous! The bastards. :)
Okay, I'm glad I'm not the only person who gets so edgy on a game like this :P
"The sight was so horrifying that I went around clutching my stomach for the rest of the day" - did you really?
Man, the drops in this game really are shockingly high... I think I've played games where you can die by falling before, but something about his falling just has such... weight behind it...
I can't believe they put cliffs that close past the start of a screen when there's such a jarring pause before you suddenly have to tap the jump button immediately! I understand it's a cruel game, but working a challenge around the load times seems a little fourth-wall...
So what normally happens to the skeleton, if you're surprised you can kill him?
In terms of things that have changed - do you know if they're at least consistent among console versions (like the consoles got the "official 1.1" versions of the maps maybe) or if each team just went "hmmm, I think THIS would be cool!" of their own volition...
"You're lucky I've changed the music... assuming I have, because I don't know yet, because I'm still here talking to you!" I am 27, my brain should not still hurt this much over the time paradoxes of recorded media...
It's just occurred to me what an ACTUAL "stumbling through" of this game would be like... can you imagine? I had my older brother to explain to me how everything worked, so I really can't imagine making any headway in this bizarre game with its myriad of contextual controls... What was it like for you?
What was the music in the moment of confusion :D
Oh man, having the dude steal the drink from you is awesome :D You said this part wasn't obligatory in the original - would his health actually be one piece shorter when you eventually fight him if you skipped it?
I just noticed the background-flashes are color-coded to show who got hit... good idea! I wanted to say "how did they differentiate in the original", but then I realised, I guess most people weren't on monochrome macs at the time. X3
"I've never tortured the people who play MY games like this, have I?" I am dying to hear responses from the people who've gotten through the area that has an achievement for dying less than ten times at it. :)
So, wait, why did the shadow even appear on screen there if he doesn't do anything in this version? Or is it possible to make that jump and have him react, but it also lets you through if you miss completely? :P
"WAAAAH! Err, that gap's a bit... wider."
Wow, he really DOES know this game!
"... I think."
Or he's a tremendous bluffer whose conscience got him in the end..
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Date: 2011-10-27 07:56 am (UTC)Saboteur II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saboteur_II:_Avenging_Angel) had ridiculously high drops and you had to watch it no matter how many screens there were. Typically you would be runnning along a tightrope and you had to keep running, if you stopped you would just fall. I don't think I knew the story until I read it at that link, although I remember the woman was the sister of the first saboteur. Nothing about Nuclear weapons, but when you could buy games for 2-3 quid you did not need to know the story.
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Date: 2011-10-27 07:24 pm (UTC)That, too, though, is a rare example of a game of the era with quite well-proportioned people, even though the focus isn't nearly so much on the animation.
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Date: 2011-10-28 05:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-27 01:58 pm (UTC)Control issues are the common thing between all of the console versions - either there will be something slightly unresponsive in the movement (which in this game is deadly), or jumps will be inconsistent, or the combat just won't work. In this game - with the difficult jumps and the potions - I wouldn't have known what the game was expecting me to do, without having played the PC version first so that I knew what the game expected me to do and not do. My post about the console versions is still here, and though it's seven years old now I still stand by most of it. In this version, as you mentioned the upward jump, I noticed that unless you held Up, he wouldn't complete it - see the door-opening difficulty at the start of level 1. Some of the frames of animation at the end seem to have been cut off.
Prince of Persia was a frightening game not just for the quite high bloodiness for the era (I really do still remember the awful feeling I had in my stomach after seeing the effect of the biting gates, the first time) but for how unpredictable it was - it got very weird starting at level 4, with the sudden cut to a room you thought you were going to breeze through on your way to the exit, only to be faced with a sudden new object and a PC speaker sting. It also has a lot of tension when you're really high up, knowing that when you slip you'll see him fall a very long way - particularly in the Sands of Time trilogy, I got a really uncomfortable tingling in the soles of my feet when I was navigating scaffolding millions of feet up in the taller rooms. The gravity in this felt a lot more floaty than the PC version, but even so, in a game that has such unusually humanlike movement, you tend to 'feel' the effects of gravity more.
I was actually impressed, when I was in my speedrunning era, of how few rooms (on the correct path) had drops right after a screen change, always giving you time to react, unless the path was such that you would have been in that room already. But I think it might be just because I'm so used to the game - and with the added split-second of loading between rooms... it's not nice, no.
There seems to be no consistency between the console versions at all - they all did their own thing, using the original game largely as a template. I haven't played very far in many of them, but I'm pretty sure the Master System had the skeleton fight intact. Speaking of which - in the original, the skeleton had no health bar on account of already being dead, and the only way to defeat him was by knocking him down a pit (which is why I was trying to retreat and turn him around when I fought him in this video). Here... they've just made him a slightly unhealthy-looking guard.
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Date: 2011-10-27 02:11 pm (UTC)I remember that skeleton pit thing, now that you mention it! Man, that was another cool touch. They really thought about this in terms of neat bullet points rather than efficient use of the gameplay elements that they had to program in.... a lesser game would have had those skeletons and floaty potions everywhere, but saving them for one-shot encounters like that really makes them that much more amazing when they do happen!
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Date: 2011-10-27 02:37 pm (UTC)And yes, that definitely enhanced the game's unpredictability as well - the way that it did something very different and unique on nearly every level (skeleton, mirror, potion-stealing, Fatty, floating, mouse rescue, upside-down potion) without re-using any of these events.
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Date: 2011-10-27 02:00 pm (UTC)I really wanted that health difference to come up at the end of the game when you fight him! And I was convinced that that would be the case - but apparently he didn't think of it. And on his next appearance - it's possible that the shadow/reflection does do what he does in the original (which is to step forward and close the door on you when you leap across the gap) if you make the jump - it's entirely possible that despite jumping at the edge of the platform, I just didn't make it (see complaints about the controls several times above).
That gap on level 7 has definitely been shifted over a bit - perhaps to ensure that you couldn't go through the wall at the edge of the screen, as I describe a bit later. But I don't know. As I also say in the video, it's difficult to remember, as the large differences make the small ones seem like you might just be misremembering them.
And finally, the music during the little interlude here is the theme music from Countdown, which you could probably think of as the British equivalent of the famous Jeopardy music.
Stay tuned for Part 2.
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Date: 2011-10-27 03:30 am (UTC)Man, this is one of those games that I'd like to see played atlas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CoQ-wXR_iw)-style.... I have such a hard time keeping all these all-alike hallways straight...
That floaty potion is a bit.... odd! I mean, it's not like there's a "leap of faith" involved; they put it in a place where there's virtually no chance of NOT deciding to drink the potion, and there's no way to know that the fall would have been fatal without taking it.... it's not like they're daring you to try the fatal fall that you wanted to take earlier but couldn't find a way to; they're just giving you a free potion, then leaving you to try jumping, and then going "oh, huh, this would've killed me, but I guess I'm floating instead?" Floating unexpectedly like that should've been an awesome moment! Freeing you from the threat of gravity, letting you take the leap that you knew would simplify things if you could just make it.... oh, bah, whatever.
"I think they might have extended that just so that, with the scrolling of the screen, you can see that there IS something to grab onto there" I was wondering if they would do anything like that! I figured the alternative was that they put something like the Mario World L+R buttons on Select, or something... and just hoped that people were curious enough to press it in screens that don't let you scroll there on your own :P I have to admit, as cruel as it's set up to be, most of the changes DO seem like the result of focus testing to iron out the REALLY unfair bits...
"Can you hear me on the keyboard by the way, saving state..." Yes ;) (Although, I don't need to tell you it now, you've already edited it.... PIME TARADOX...)
"I miss the between-level animations; they would give you some hint as to what to actually DO in the levels..." Really? The only ones I remember were just the princess fretting as she looked at the hourglass... What were the other ones like?
I don't know what, but something reminded me of the boxart.... as much as the PC version (http://www.giantbomb.com/prince-of-persia/61-2561/) had that wonderful pulp flair to it, conjuring up that air of adventure and mystery.. there really is something awfully classy (and apt) about the SNES version (http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/24/prince-of-persia-snes-included-with-the-forgotten-sands-on-wii/), isn't there? I guess they knew it was meant for a more cerebral audience than the standard console fare, ultimately...
Now that I think about it, I wonder how many games actually existed on NES and SNES simultaneously like that?
Hah! And now I JUST got to the part where you mention the SNES game. :) Now I'm curious how different/similar it was!
What tension would there normally have been in the part with the mouse? I guess they make you wait longer, give you time to say "dash it all" and reload your save file before finding out that you actually HAD done it right after all? (See my earlier remark about focus-testing away the distinctly frustrating bits, if that's what it was!)
Does the game still have a countdown timer noise for the timed gates?
It's funny they say "exit opened", when for the rest of the switches you just have to bloody well figure out what they did..!
"Cut out some things in the name of getting through the game more quickly, we're not Final Fantasy 13 here" -- wasn't FF13's whole problem that they cut out too much? Or am I misunderstanding what you mean..
"Let's see if this [sneaking] trick works..." Y'know, I was just thinking earlier "it's so weird how they turn even when you're a whole floor below them", but then I held back from saying it because I figured "well maybe it's that they hear your footsteps" -- now you're saying that the original had a puzzle where if you tiptoe, he WOULDN'T turn? I love that they thought of it too :) This game really is a labor of love...
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Date: 2011-10-27 05:17 pm (UTC)Perhaps the oddest thing about the floating potion in level 7 is that you don't even have to take it! The fall is short enough to survive if you hang by your fingertips from the ledge with the potion and just let yourself drop. On the PC, you get some floaty music to indicate to you that something's changed, but... yes, it hasn't been an impassable pit until then - you've only seen it if you didn't cling on in time at the very start of the level.
I might have exaggerated the usefulness of the cut-scenes in my ranting about what had been cut out - the only one that would have made much difference is the one before level 8, where you see the princess sending her mouse out to... do something (I'm not really sure, now I say it). That would at least give some indication that you might be about to be rescued (I know it did to me), rather than having a mouse suddenly show up and open a door for you - but otherwise, you're right that the PC version involved a rather long pause at that door before rescue comes, potentially leading you to believe that you've done something wrong. The SNES version did it well - instead of just one door, Jafar appears and catches you between two of them, but a few seconds after he leaves the mouse turns up to open the way forward for you.
It seemed to be released on the consoles at a weird point between the eras (it was on both the Master System and Megadrive as well) - almost like how games of the time would have a version on the consoles and a very cut-down or completely different attempt at them on the handhelds. The SNES version really is very different - the same template for the game exists in that you can recognize some rooms scattered around the doubled length of the game, but it adds a vast number of new obstacles, boss fights and normal enemies. It was a sequel in all but name, really.
The game has no... separate countdown noise for the timed gates - on the PC, they opened quickly, then slowly clicked back down into place, with the noise of them coming down indicating that you had to hurry up. Here on the NES, they whoosh up, wait silently for a bit, then whoosh down again.
And yes, at that point in level 10, you could go a short way around by tiptoeing across the floor for a while, turning around and then climbing up to hit the guard in the back (if you tried it without him being turned around, he would just knock you down). Even in an era with 'sandbox' games promising so much to do in them, there really is something charming about the amount of detail that went into just twelve levels of environment in this one.
The SNES box artwork is actually the one I'm most familiar with as that same impression of the Prince was used on the Ultimate Collection, the first legitimate copy of the games I owned... but yes, the original's artwork is really unusual and distinctive, for a game. Each version had their own fairly unique approach to the aesthetic - the Genesis version of the Prince was played by Mark Hamill, and the Mega CD one frankly looks like it should have been voiced by Strong Bad.
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Date: 2011-10-28 01:47 am (UTC)I've been wondering myself whether the guy making that Metroid one had a special plugin, or was just painstakingly patient - but come on, Prince Of Persia couldn't be any simpler, it doesn't scroll! :) All you'd have to do is move your gameplay footage to cover a different part of the map every time the game changes screens... (Hell, the more I think about it; you could even do it in Flash, and save an awful lot of bandwidth in the process...!)
Anyway, it looks like the same guy has actually already thrown together an example of one level from the game, so you can get a taste of what it would be like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqhNhs9jD8A
"yes, it hasn't been an impassable pit until then - you've only seen it if you didn't cling on in time at the very start of the level."
Oh, shoot -- but, I guess that's what would happen to most people upon playing that level for the first time? (I didn't realise it was the same room, hence my desire to see it played Atlas-style ;) ) That would make me rescind my statement about the drop not being foreshadowed, at least...
"The PC version involved a rather long pause at that door before rescue comes, potentially leading you to believe that you've done something wrong. The SNES version did it well - instead of just one door, Jafar appears and catches you between two of them, but a few seconds after he leaves the mouse turns up to open the way forward for you."
At least the SNES version has a fancy mini "cutscene" of sorts, to indicate that this is a major point in the level - to me at least, it would feel very different than just thinking "oh fuck, the door closed because I took too long". (Though I'll admit it's a more pleasant compromise than just having the mouse show up instantly... although it would also make me wonder why Jafar doesn't finish the job right then and there!)
"there really is something charming about the amount of detail that went into just twelve levels of environment in this one."
That's the old problem with video games as value propositions - Portal arguably had a similar approach, but the only way they could justify selling that to people was by giving you two other games with it.... downloadable games are starting to alleviate this slightly, but even then it seems like far too often, the length of a game is being held up as the element that all other budgetary concerns have to bend to suit.. ah well.
"the Mega CD one frankly looks like it should have been voiced by Strong Bad."
You wouldn't have a hard time convincing someone that it WAS! That YAHHHH (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6k9u7YuiqI#t=0m53s) is completely..... indescribable. :) (And an especially odd choice since they had a much... er.... slightly more suitable one right after it!)
Also, wait, what? How did the graphics get a DOWNGRADE from cartridge (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkxcBHl62nk) to CD (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqLXxXfrtYE)?
Somewhat relatedly, I just stumbled onto the fact that this game was originally written for the APPLE ][ ! I had no idea! When I first saw youtube videos of an Apple ][ version, I just thought, "oh, how embarassing, they'll port it to ANYTHING; there's no chance of a later game like this running REMOTELY well on that kind of hardware..." Man, seriously, my respect for what they accomplished has just about doubled upon learning how EARLY they pulled all of this off! Unthinkable!
... did I just say "they"? Because really, it was all one guy, wasn't it. Jordan Mechner. That's even more staggering. I guess you can count his brother too -- given what a fan you are, I assume this isn't news, but I might as well ask because it would be horribly remiss of me not to share this with you if you haven't seen it - are you familiar with the original footage (http://vimeo.com/1854745) that he traced the animations from? Truly uncanny when you see the exact frames jump out at you from a human being...
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Date: 2011-10-30 11:52 pm (UTC)And yes - a recent spate of Prince of Persia activity over the last few weeks (which was only partly directly caused by me) inspired me to download and try the original Apple II version. It does have some issues with slowing down when more than a couple of objects are on the screen, but the controls are otherwise perfect and responsive, despite the game's relative ugliness making it seem like it should feel sub-par - the shakiness on the console conversions isn't innate to the limited hardware, it's just that the original one was made by somebody who actually cared about what he was doing!
I've seen some of the original footage before - it's so difficult to remember, now, that it's not just a matter of him slapping up a video from his digital camera on to Youtube, and that this was all recorded on VHS with a camcorder the size of a suitcase. I love that the new independent downloadable market has reintroduced the idea of the lone bedroom coders, but thinking back to the time before people had the tools that we do now... it's very impressive, what they accomplished.
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Date: 2011-10-31 02:49 am (UTC)What's wrong with just moving a video frame around a map? Sure, it's not perfect, but it's never going to look perfect anyway just because you never really see him cross the screen threshhold... it's the principle! But, if you really want it to 'save state'- why not just cut the video into the various screens (which would probably make your job easier anyway) and then leave the previous video in place when it finishes running :)
the shakiness on the console conversions isn't innate to the limited hardware, it's just that the original one was made by somebody who actually cared about what he was doing!
Amen!!
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Date: 2011-10-28 08:34 am (UTC)I can't think of a single coherent thing to say.
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Date: 2011-10-28 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-29 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-27 03:31 am (UTC)"OOOOOOH~~~!" THERE'S the kind of vocalizing I'd been waiting for. :)
I'm curious - what was the puzzle that they cut out of level 11? And I wonder why they made so many of those platforms pre...collapsed?
"The dungeon tileset, but blue.. might be purple..." It was blue+purple right from the start! You commented as much yourself right at the beginning of the video :)
"There used to be a skeleton here - not a living one, just one on the ground." Now that you mention it, is there only that ONE (fighting) skeleton in the entire game? How odd..!
"Wheeeeeeee......" <3
"Oh, it's a skeleton!" Statement withdrawn :D But... only on the first AND last level is almost odder!
"Let's fight the shadow who is actually a skeleton." WHAT? That would've been the shadow fight? So.... in this entire version.... the whole "jump through the mirror" thing amounts to... he drinks one of your potions. I don't know whether to chalk this up to "shaving off the confusing bits" (I remember my brother doing that - you have to put away your sword and walk into him, right?) rather than it being a technical challenge - I mean, it's not like the frames aren't already on the cartridge! :P Although... is there a "draw/sheath sword" button in this version? It seemed like it was coming out automatically in most of these fights (although obviously it's hard to tell without seeing your controller!), and I guess that would have precluded the puzzle :)
"Level 14" - didn't you say the SNES version had 20 levels to the original's 12? And where did 13 go? (Maybe I just lost count...)
So, wait, what is the point of that whole level leading up to the princess? You just..... walk through some plate-activated gates? Is there some puzzle that you made look too easy or something at least..?
Oooooogh, and it just drops you back to the legal screen? So anticlimactic, I hate that :S Feels like all your work just got erased behind you :P Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the music didn't just continue on blithely as though the NES didn't even realise the significance of what just happened..!
Also, I just remembered, wasn't there a part where you have to do the Indiana Jones thing and walk out across an invisible bridge? Was that one of the things they cut?
Wow.... I just remembered that that part of the game was always linked in my mind with Focus' Hocus Pocus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGaVUApDVuY), because it's what my brother was playing on the stereo when he was playing that part - he called my dad into the room to see the invisible bridge part, and my dad wasn't sure if the music was from the game or something separate; he found it appropriate! In hindsight, objectively, I'm not sure I agree (and I'm not sure how he thought even a mac could be capable of that kind of sound quality at the time - not that the musical cues that DID exist weren't rather extravagant for the era (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaleVnNDip4&feature=related)!) but the two have always been linked in my mind since then :) In fact, there are a few points in games like that.... I feel like I must have asked about that on videogame_tales at some point...
Anyway, wow! That was tremendously long, but very fun :) I feel like I've just spent an evening hanging out with you over an old game! That was fun, we must do it again some time. :)
...... actually, hell, the more I think about it - have you thought about doing these on Livestream..? Maybe with someone there to read the chat, for the sake of you not having to put down the controller and read over and over, and for the sake of anyone later watching the recording then missing out on the comments you might choose to respond to...
This is starting to sound complicated, don't let me interfere too much with a good thing :) Cheers!
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Date: 2011-10-27 05:39 pm (UTC)Level 11's whole 'thing' was that the ceiling was made up almost entirely of collapsing platforms, and you had to knock them down strategically to progress. This one... knocked them down for you, apparently - perhaps they couldn't cope with that many objects moving around at a time (I know it seems to get a bit sluggish when it's moving more than one of the biting gates). And I thought level 12 was even bluer/purpler than the dungeon had been, but it's possible that having just come from a very yellow level exaggerated the change.
Yes, as we talked about after my first reply above - the game had so many elements that it only used once, making it surprising all the time... and instead of using one of them here, they replaced it with a half-hearted attempt that they'd used for another, diminishing both in the process - now you're feeling my frustration at the whole anticlimax of the game! :) I think you might have hit on the reason why, though - you can't run away from fights in this, so there's no "put away sword" button and it wouldn't have worked. But that's a wonderfully clever part of the game, the kind of thing you wonder about and have to ask around about at school because the Internet hasn't been invented yet, and someone tells you how to do it and it's suddenly so obvious... I loved things like that. (While I'm on the subject, there's no "draw sword" button in any version I know of, until Prince of Persia 2 - he just does it automatically when he's facing a guard on the same platform as him. On the NES, it seemed that instead of going through the change of modes, it just... replaced your platforming sprite with that of the swordfighting one when you were in a guard's general vicinity.)
The number-of-levels conflict comes from a... level-numbering confusion. The PC game had twelve levels, as announced by the "LEVEL X" messages that you get at the bottom of the screen. But the part after going over the invisible bridge (which was cut out in favour of going over a very normal bridge, as you noted) had a noticeable level-change transition to it, rather than just being a change between rooms as you'd expect. You're the kind of person who will know what I mean by this - you got a fraction of a second of black screen as it loaded, even though you weren't changing levels by the normal route. You can see the change as it declares "level 13" on the NES, but this part of the game is usually referred to as level 12a in the fan community. As for the part of the game after that... there's no challenge to it at all, the timer has already stopped, and it's just a sort of... reward breather level, with you having to open the gates and run to the princess without any obstacles in your way. I would have just called it "the end" rather than a level, but the NES chooses to number it as well, bringing us up to 14.
I'm very glad, by the way, that you also share something that I don't think I've told people - I dislike that moment when you've completed a game and it just resets, as well! I suppose it was a reminder of... even though you've just won, the game's still here and doesn't really care whether you won or not. I remember that Monkey Island got around this by not having a menu at all and just stopping at "Turn your computer off and go to sleep!" (though I'm fairly sure you could Ctrl+Q out of it, or something). The music continuation there, though, might have been an artefact of my editing, as I cut some seconds of silence out of the visuals and my voice channel when it was on the congratulations screen (the game audio at the start and end was actually the last thing re-added to the edited video). Having said that, I wouldn't be surprised if it just did that in the actual game.
As for what I would have done if I'd run out of time... I don't really know. I didn't think that far ahead.
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Date: 2011-10-28 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-28 02:18 am (UTC)And the successful jump just after it shows the weird floatiness of the gravity that comes up sometimes... it's a bit like the palace is on the moon.
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Date: 2011-10-27 08:34 pm (UTC)For that reason I'd love to attempt a Livestream, but they might end up as separate things from these videos... I'm a two-monitor person, so I could quite easily take questions as they come, but the idea of organizing a time when people are likely to watch is even more complicated than my current recording setup!
I remember the conversation somewhere about remembering things associated with games, as well - I think it might have been the reason behind my own post sort of along those lines, in part at least. I also remember saying that I usually just associated... a game's music with itself, as I didn't tend to have music on at the same time as a game - though now, actually, the first two Iron Savior albums I bought remind me very strongly of Albion because I had them on in the background while finally FAQing my way through it in around 2003 (that and they're quite thematically similar). I'm sure there was another thing with which I replied at the time, though it escapes me now.
And I always envied the Amiga (and Mac, in this case, though it came up far less frequently) for having such better graphics and/or music quality than the PC!
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Date: 2011-11-01 12:27 am (UTC)