Around the same time that MOOD made a big impression with C64 sceners in 1996/97, Attila Pohorai (Coding and level graphics) and Viktor Varga (Intro code and graphics) put together a preview which would get many fanatical game’s players excited, including the C64 crowd.
Even though the classic Prince Of Persia was converted to almost every format in existence, the C64 version for some unknown reason was missed out. Sad, because every version that came out was a huge hit. It’s unknown actually if the C64 did have an official version in the planning stages, though the non existence of a C64 conversion was about to be rectified.
A series of stills were released as a slideshow preview, showing various screens of the game on the C64. It was just impressive to see the game making some kind of form on our beloved breadbin, but behind the hype it seems that Prince Of Persia looked a little off colour and plain with its shades of cyan and blue.
And even though a lot of screens were in the preview, there was no main character to look at, or any action whatsoever… just some stills and a good conversion of the game’s Arabian tune. Once the excitement died down, so did any sign of more news of the game. The guy behind the graphics contacted GTW and mentioned that the game hadn’t been scrapped, but no more has since been heard and it seems as P.O.P had finally been stopped.
It is not known how far the game ever reached, and even if the main character was present and running around, just like the original game. Hopefully contact with Viktor will help us find out some more, and even see some glimpses of what had been done.
In total there have been 3 attempts on converting Prince of Persia – one unofficial and two official. Including this entry, you can read about all 3 within GTW64. However, in late 2011 – Mr Sid completed an impressive unofficial conversion of the game in Easy Flash format which you can checkout here: http://www.rgcd.co.uk/2011/10/prince-of-persia-c64.html
Contributions: Viktor Varga
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Preview_PrincePersia.zip (zip)
Gallery
Update history
13/04/21 – Credit fixes and tidy ups
I keep hearing things and reading things about massive titles planned for the C64 for the mid to late 90s and nothing came from it. Bearing in mind very few titles were coming out as most people had converted to the consoles and Amiga/PC by this stage. It would have made no or very little financial sense to release these titles on the C64 platform. Since about 1983, I personally left the C64 scene as a gamer in 1993 and went to the Megadrive and shortly after moving onto the PC due to the dwindling support and very very little shelf space C64 titles were receiving in the shops. As much as I like to read articles such as this, I do tend to take with a pinch of salt, maybe get a bit of publicity for the titles, maybe for training by porting parts of code over or may even be fan written in some cases. Is it really plausible for a company to have a big title release on the C64 in the mid/late 90s? Especially post 1995?