Prince Of Persia - Completion, Kudos, Bonuses

Thanks to GameSpot for their feature documenting the final hours of development on Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, Ubisoft's update of the classic '80s platform adventure. The piece follows the development team as they squash the final, most obscure bugs, such as "...the disappearance of the head of the female character, Farah, if you leave the game on for more than 12 consecutive hours", and elsewhere, IGN PS2 rate the results as "the perfect realization of the franchise in 3D." GameSpy also has a set of features on the game, with the Xbox version's review largely positive, proclaiming "this prince is no pauper", while 1UP spell out the bonuses for each version, including "PS2: The entire original Prince of Persia... Xbox: The entire original Prince of Persia 2... GC/GBA: The entire original Prince of Persia, unlockable via the GBA or GameCube."

Comments

Translation: go buy a GBA!

[dougmc]

GC/GBA: The entire original Prince of Persia, unlockable via the GBA or GameCube. Connectivity between the two will also allow for automatic health regeneration on the GameCube game.

Translation: Go buy an GBA, a copy of PoP for it, and the cable to go between the two, and we'll make the game easier for you!

Gotta buy 'em all!

Re:Translation: go buy a GBA!

[Trillian_1138]

I initially thought the same thing, but upon rereading the (very very short) article it looks like you do NOT need a GBA to actually unlock the origonal Prince of Persia on the GameCube version. But, should you have both, and unlock both, then you'll get the bonus of regenerating health.

While I am annoyed with games like Metroid Prime requiring you to have both a GC and a GBA and a link cable and the two games to unlock something that arguably should just be unlockable on the GC, that doesn't seem to be the case here.

It looks like you can unlock and enjoy the bonus game without the GBA, but should you have the GBA you'll get an aditional bonus.

-Trillian

True to life realism

[orthogonal]

"...the disappearance of the head of the female character, Farah, if you leave the game on for more than 12 consecutive hours",

This is an example of the increasing realism in video games.

In real life, too, if you game for more than 12 consecutive hours, your wife or goirlfriend is apt to lose her head over it. Or more succinctly, if you game for more than 12 consecutive hours, dude, you won't be getting any head.

PS2 version is great

[Masem]

I played the demo, but my reserve copy got here today at my local Gamestop, and I've got about an hour of gameplay into it. The full game doesn't disappoint; smooth beautiful graphics (with several nods to the animation style from the original 2d games), the fighting is great (particularly with the slow/reverse time effects you can use) and the jumping puzzles are yet to be impossible (and thanks to the reverse time of the dagger, you can rewind to retry the difficult jumps a limited number of times, but save points are sufficiently frequent to not make this a problem).

PC unlockable?

[Dark Paladin]

While the PS2 unlockable (original Prince of Persia) is a big draw for me, I'm curious to know what the PC version will have for extras - both PoP1 and PoP2? Nothing at all?

This is a game I expect to be ported to OS X in time (a good chunk of Ubisoft's titles are making it that way these days - thanks, Aspyr!), and what's on the PC version will decide if I get the PS2 or wait for the PC/possible OS X version.

Why the original was great...

[Pyro226]

One of the best things about the original game was the one hour time limit and unlimited lives system. Almost all of the games back then had a system where you got X number of lives and sometimes Y number of continues and that was it. The system isn't much different today, except that in many games you get one life, but you can reload your saves until you get carpel-tunnel syndrome. In prince of persia you have unlimited lives; you respawn at the start of the level, of which there are 12, but you only have 60 minutes to complete the game. And I must say that getting to the last boss with a minute and a half left on the clock is much more nerve racking that getting to the end of a FPS with 15 health, because even with 15 health you can always shoot dodge save, shoot dodge save...

Other aspects of the ingenuity of the game also stand out. You could do an amazing number of things with just the four arrow keys and shift, which are the only controls in the game. I won't bore you with all of them, but the system is truely ingenius, although the sword fights could have been a little more complicated.

I also loved the doppleganger; it took me so many tries to figure out how to defeat him at the end of the game. Ever time you hit him it hurts you, if you have more health than him then you die when you kill him anyway, all of the ledges nearby are fatal falls (so you can't just knock him down to a lower level), and if you try to run past him he'll just kill you.

I still have Prince of Persia (the original DOS version) on my laptop, and I play it when I'm bored and I have ~45 minutes to kill.

(/Nostalgia)