Prince of Persia 3D - What Happened?

[Music] let's see [Music] [Applause] [Music] before we leap into adventure with the Prince of Persia I'd like to give a shout out to strayed lights the newly released action adventure game from Embers that puts an Innovative spin on melee combat as a tiny Bean of light looking for Transcendence you grow into a formidable fighter who has to purge their inner demons via a fluid fighting system where you have to sink your defense to your enemy's colored Affinity given the combat a strategic Edge which you can then deepen via variety of upgrades you'll also be treated to an ethereal score by Austin wintry of banner Saga and journey Fame as you explore the mysterious shadowed Landscapes and crumbling ruins of strayed lights's world it's out now on every major console format including Steam and if you'd like to check it out in more detail hit the link in the description below thanks again to Embers for sponsoring today's video and without further Ado let's start the show welcome back to another episode of what how how did it take me this long to talk about Prince of Persia it's been one of my personal all-time favorite franchises and one that's been fraught with just as many troubled and forgotten entries as it's had shining Paragons of game design Mastery from Jordan meckner's Original Classic to that weird Advanced Wars one and of course that insane reboot trailer that went unnoticed on the internet for like eight years there's been a number of disturbances that have rippled through Prince of Persia's 34 year history so on this week's episode I'll be pointing my Dagger of Truth to one such Ripple the first three-dimensional entry in the series and one of the more fractured stories I've ever covered on this show so grab your sword and watch your step as I answer the question what happened to Prince of Persia 3D in 1993 Prince of Persia 2 The Shadow and the flame released on dos to somewhat of a muted response having come out four years after the original and into a Marketplace that had changed significantly since the late 80s pop 2 was a success commercially and critically but saw a decline in sales and notoriety that its predecessor had previously enjoyed seen as the original had been such a milestone nonetheless series Creator Jordan mechner had made sure to sow the seeds of the future with an ending that hinted towards other Adventures but that unfortunately didn't quite come to pass within the pages of 2008's Prince of Persia the graphic novel mechner wrote as it turned out I never got the chance to complete my epic Trilogy the big video game sensation of 1993 was Doom the first 3D shooter the public no longer wanted 2D Platformers so plans for a third Prince of Persia game were quietly shelved with Publisher broderbun putting the prince on ice but still happy enough to work with mechner he instead put his efforts towards developing a new passion project of his the last Express an incredibly unique title lauded by critics for its compelling story and immersive setting and ignored by the public at large eventually leading up to the game's producer Mark Netter calling it a total commercial failure in a 2008 interview with gamedeveloper.com as good as it was the last Express did derail apparently forcing its publisher border Bund to eat a 6 million dollar loss with that still stinging mechner was considering leaving game development behind altogether but in 1996 he received a call from producer Andrew Patterson at Red Orb entertainment another Studio under the Border Bund umbrella Andrew kept his pitch simple would mechner like to help with a new Prince of Persia and recapture the Thrills daring leaps and mysticism the series was known for but with the added power of Cutting Edge 3D well simple is often best so mechner signed on excited at the prospect of what polygons and texture Maps could bring to the franchise now while having a series Creator on board would obviously be a boon to any project mechner had been quoted as saying that Prince of Persia 3D was very much Patterson's baby and aside from co-writing the basic story scenario and giving his overall blessing he wasn't directly involved in the day-to-day development as for who would well since Red Orb was busy with Riven the sequel to mist Patterson sought out illinois-based mindscape entertainment for the job with Red Orb handling the publishing duties while mindscape did have some prior experience with the property publishing the NES and Game Boy ports of the original pop their back catalog is also filled with a cornucopia of licensed shovelware that they they both developed and published but [ __ ] all of that they made steel Harbinger Patterson wanted to get this right though and decided to hand pick many who would serve on the team making sure they had admiration and a love for the franchise that I mean Prince of Persia not not steel Harbinger their first order of business was to solidify the storyline with mechner choosing to discard the foreshadowing from Prince of Persia 2 to put the focus on a fresh new villain while still using the same OG Prince the team then planned out 15 levels all meant to serve the story connecting each narrative beat together starting with the princess incarceration in a familiar dungeon all the way to a floating palace in the sky with the narrative Backbone in place they started building out the main levels and systems with animation playing a key role as it always tended to do in this series mechner had famously rotoscoped his own brother's acrobatic Feats to bring the prince to life in the first game and here mindscape decided to do something similar but throwing way more money at It mo-capped Animation was arguably in its infancy at that point in time so they opted to film weapons Specialists and athletes acting out sequences in front of a blue screen and then just started hand animating the new polygonal Prince with the live action footage used solely as a reference guide whether or not this was the right course of action is fairly debatable well you can see the results when the prince is climbing and mantling services a lot of combat and movement animations look like any other 3D game of the era definitely a far cry from the prince's fluid 2D roots in terms of level navigation the team also decided to settle on a design that was rapidly growing in popularity with the success of a certain teal tank top wearing Adventurer so tank controls were how the prince would get around the team kept many familiar series Staples as well apps potions and puzzles littered every level with fresh additions like stealth and new weapon types like the bow and arrow featuring no less than nine different arrowheads which when you think about it was very much the style at the time development on pot 3D was rolling along at a decent pace the story was planned out levels were being built and animations were being animated which means that it was really the perfect time for the owners of the Prince of Persia IP broader Bund to go bankrupt and get bought out by another company yeah let's rewind slightly for added context broader bun had been founded by both Doug and Gary carlston and in 1995 Doug had attempted a failed purchase of a group of up-and-comers called The Learning Company for those that may not recall The Learning Company published many popular edutainment games like Carmen San Diego reader rabbit and the Oregon Trail but really made their money off games based on children's properties like Scooby-Doo Sesame Street and of course the vile Caillou I don't want to play nicely by September of 1998 however the shoe was firmly on the other foot as it was the learning company that bought broader Bund for 420 smoke weed every day million dollars in stock this of course resulted in a period of adjustment and uncertainty fortunately mechner and the Prince of Persia IP still carried some clout so the project was able to continue development Under New Management without much fuss that is a until three months later a third company then Randy ortoned in from out of nowhere the American toy company Mattel then bought The Learning Company in December of 98 which unfortunately did lead to pop 3D getting Shackled to an ironclad release date September 1999 no ifs ands or buts mindscape had been making excellent progress but 15 complex 3D levels each with narrative purpose was still a tall order excising a level would have had a ripple effect Beyond just losing a few platforms to jump across as the narrative design would also be affected in the end all 15 levels remained in the finished game but unfortunately the team weren't able to polish them to any meaningful degree famously the released box copy of the windows version wasn't for all intents and purposes 100 completed when it hit store shells as the quality assurance Department wasn't given nearly enough time to find the majority of all the issues of which there were plenty among a myriad of smaller bugs the camera was problematic often getting stuck in walls and on other obstructions which unfortunately meant poor visibility in a game chock full of instant kill death traps the most egregious of all though were the multiple progress halting bugs contained within the later levels which would require patches to Iron Out comparisons with Tomb Raider were also unavoidable and unfortunately unfavorable with many citing the similarity to idos's Blockbuster Series this was something Jordan mechner had concerns over from the very beginning saying in a 2004 interview with game Sutra the problem with Prince of Persia 3D from the moment it was proposed and on through the early stages the obvious question to ask was isn't this just Tomb Raider with baggy pants and a turban and ultimately my think in the end it really really was Tomb Raider with baggy pants and a turban that wasn't enough because of this reviews for the PC version were mixed at best but there were other elements to the game that did receive praise namely the presentation story and atmosphere the team at mindscape were passionate about the material and had wanted to make the best game they could but it was hard to find it underneath the wonky camera sluggish controls and numerous bugs so perhaps because of its poor reputation and being outshone by other big name titles the prince's Majestic leap into the third dimension landed with a commercial thud as sales data doesn't appear to exist at all but considering what would happen later this failure shouldn't be too surprising while Red Orb entertainment was kept on as the publishing label for the windows version was The Learning Company and Mattel who took the hit on the game's low sales console ports had been devised with a plan to adjust things to skew more towards action in an attempt to appeal to console only players Avalanche software who at the time were known for porting Midway titles like the N64 version of MK mythologies all right and Rampage 2 Universal tour were chosen for the task and they had a hell of a one in front of them the original intent was to offer the game on the current most dominant console format the PlayStation singular Ballin and the up-and-coming newcomer the Sega Dreamcast it wouldn't take long before things would suddenly go sideways however because of course this is what happened yeah Avalanche software barely had a year to port pop3d to two very different platforms as well as make a variety of changes and fixes to the core game putting some pretty heavy pressure on a team to deliver a lot in a short amount of time uh again very early on though the PlayStation version despite being officially announced was quietly canceled which seemed ill-advised as it likely would have had a better shot at selling decently due to the machine's massive install base by the end of the 90s now the following is my personal assumption but I have to think that porting a then current PC game to the Aging 32-bit PlayStation would have taken too many compromises and way too much time for Mattel's liking but we don't know for sure Prince 3D may not have been the most Cutting Edge thing out at the time but it was still punching far above the weight of the average PS1 title the official line seems to have been simply that the PlayStation version was canceled so the team could put all their focus on the Dreamcast which to be fair would have been far easier to Port given that machine's architecture redubbed Prince of Persia Arabian nights or depending on how you read that cover Arabian Nights prince of Persia this was an attempt to perhaps distance it from the PC games less than Stellar reputation to their credit Avalanche software made good on a number of changes to the original game in addition to making sure it was as bug free as possible an inventory screen was added allowing the prince to stalk a number of potions in a backpack his movement speed was increased several weapons from the PC version were removed but were replaced with swords of varying strength the lighting was improved several control issues were tweaked and Polished and the combat system was completely overhauled although you could argue it wasn't exactly much better to specific levels from the PC were also completely scrapped but some consider this a positive change as they were were often viewed as the worst levels from the original game while all of that sounds okay on paper avalanche's efforts to improve the game were severely hampered by the removal of the PC version's ability to save at any time with a checkpoint system being put in its place this could prove frustrating as checkpoints were pretty infrequent and again this was an adventure where any misstep could lead to an instant and grisly death which is why save anywhere was pretty handy so when it was released in November of 2000 reviews ended up about the same between both versions and and hell if we use the old game rankings averages the Dreamcast Port actually fared slightly worse despite many tangible improvements I can't find any sales numbers for this version of the game either but considering Sega announced they were discontinuing the Dreamcast just two months later I can't imagine the prince save the console with Blockbuster sales so yeah Arabian nights featuring Prince of Persia wasn't the financial softening blow that Red Orb I'm sorry I mean Mattel had hoped for in fact the purchase of The Learning Company among other mistakes had drawn Iyer from Mattel's shareholders with just how much money it was losing them so they called for the unceremonious booting of then CEO Jill barad and voted in someone new her successor then sold off The Learning Company and all their border Bund IPS including Prince of Persia to an Acquisitions firm where they would surely sit unloved and unused for decades and because I guess everyone else was doing it Red Orb also went out of business that exact same year with their last published game being Soul fighter I believe which was also on the Dreamcast coincidentally enough Andrew Patterson for his part bounced around for a few years before becoming the VP head of mobile at our good friend EA's sports games division as for Jordan mechner well after the abject failure the Prince's first big foray into 3D he contemplated walking away from the industry altogether again but not before Ubisoft picked up the rights to Prince of Persia from that very same Acquisitions firm they called mechner up and asked if he would like to help in crafting a brand new adventure set in ancient Persia to which he enthusiastically declined and if you know of any other stories from the video game or movie industry that no wait no that that that's not how this story goes uh let me start over to which she enthused physiatically accepted as he was intrigued by the time manipulating mechanics the young team at Ubisoft Montreal were proposing and that concludes the tumultuous tale of Prince of Persia 3D and I'm fairly confident I won't have to discuss this franchise on the show anytime soon yep there's no reason at all no pass me the pulpium and if you know of any other video games movies or other media that were lost in an ocean of a storm let me know in the comments below or enter the palace that is my Twitter see you next time and thanks for watching you are [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 234,414

Keywords: matt mcmuscles, Prince of Persia 3D, What Happened?, Wha Happun, Video Game Documentaries, Prince of Persia, History of Prince of Persia, The Making of Prince of Persia 3D, Prince of Persia Sands of Time, Sands of Time Remake

Id: HeYAVDj-gO0

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 29 2023