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: 2011-10-27 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.
no subject
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!