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Video Rewind: Jordan Mechner: Pioneering game designer on creating Prince of Persia, Karateka, and a new graphic novel memoir
This is a preview of a premium episode. You can find a video version of the full episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dvoGPZEY1g
We’ve been on the road this week, recording some in-person episodes in Portland Oregon, with Ryan Coulter—co-founder of The James Brand, and the wonderfully hilarious graphic designer Aaron Draplin.
We’re excited to bring you this episodes soon, and in the meantime we’re rewinding to one of our favorite episodes this year with Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner. You may have heard that we’re publishing more video from our episodes, and you can now find a video version of this episode on YouTube. Enjoy!
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As a kid in the 80’s, Eli fell in love with games on computers like the Apple II, Commodore 64, and later the Amiga and Macintosh. One of the very first games he played was called Karateka, which was inspiring for the realistic movements of its digital karate antagonists, even on a black-and-green Apple II monitor.
Our guest today, Jordan Mechner, created Karateka while an undergrad at Yale University in 1984, and it went on to be a commercial success. He followed it up with the game Prince of Persia (you’ll hear a clip from the soundtrack in the introduction, which Jordan’s father composed and which Jordan invented a way to transpose onto the Apple II’s tinny speakers before game soundtracks were widespread on the machine).
Jordan documented the creation of the game in a wonderful published version of his diaries called The Making of Prince of Persia, and we spoke with him about how he taught himself the skills to build successful video games in a pre-internet era, why he journaled about his work process (and what it taught him), and about his new graphic novel Replay, a memoir recounting his own family story of war, exile and new beginnings.
Karateka on the Apple IIPrince of Persia on the Apple II (play the Mac version online here)
Published on 12 hours ago