Struggling through Prince of Persia

[davidn]

This 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:

• 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.

Comments

[kibet.livejournal.com]

It was only after finishing it, I realised that if someone said that there was an hour long TV program of a guy playing a computer game and talking over it, without seeing the person, you would never switch on the TV for that. Yet somehow, it did not feel like a waste of time, and it went by very fast. You should go on the public access channel with it. :D

[davidn]

During the Christmas period, one of the channels in California broadcasts a 12-hour-long programme called "Log" that's a looped video of a log burning in a fireplace. As far-fetched as it seems, this means there's probably room on the airwaves for something like this ;)

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.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Does it not seem bizarre that Sir Patrick Moore was Gamesmaster. In fact, that was my first introduction to him and did not know him for the Sky at night until after.

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).

[davidn]

Yes, I think I knew Patrick Moore first from that, as well - and it does seems strange, though having lived in America for five years now, most everything from Britain is beginning to seem strange when I come to explain it to anyone here. "Yes, we biomechanically enhanced a TV astronomer and had him play a sort of game deity pitting human children in a tournament against each other" - or that one of my favourite programmes involved putting someone blindfolded into a blue-screened set of fatal drops and corridors with saws in them with a pretty certain chance of being killed.

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?

[kibet.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, I think it has been switched off.

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.

[davidn]

I've seen that before, somewhere... It, much like the post below, is one of those programmes that I really can't believe existed - as much as I love the idea that something that's just daft fun can still be made now, somehow the elements come together to produce something that's just... stupid!

[kibet.livejournal.com]

For Wipeout, not the Bob Monkhouse version, at least they skip over a lot of it. If you think we have been doing it for years, even with the Grand Knockout Tournament. You were probably too young to remember it on the TV but I remember it purely for the fact that I knew Christopher Reeve would successfully cross the slippery log as he was Superman!

[kjorteo]

And that's not even the strangest thing you've done to your celebrities!

[davidn]

Yes, I had a feeling that you might be about to bring that up...! No matter how many times I see it, I still can't quite believe it happened. But he's perfect for the sheer weight of ham required for the job.

At the other end of the scale, someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to have him presenting a hospital documentary.