Jordan Mechner tells the back story of Prince of Persia 3D (1999), the often-overlooked title between the 2D originals and The Sands of Time: why Broderbund passed on a 2D sequel, how its new Red Orb division built the 3D game internally with his limited input, and what happened after it shipped.

The rarely discussed POP3D

The website Players, based in Kyiv, recently posted an anniversary retrospective of Prince of Persia 3D — the game published by Red Orb in 1999. I thought I'd contribute a bit of the back story behind this often-overlooked POP title.

In the summer and fall of 1993, with Prince of Persia 2 on store shelves and selling well, Broderbund was eager for another 2D sequel. This fit my plans: I was launching my own game studio, Smoking Car Productions, to make The Last Express, and having a development slate of two titles instead of just one (one super-risky and ambitious, the other a sequel to a proven hit) made good business sense. I'd always planned POP2 as the middle episode of a 2D trilogy (that's why it ended on a cliffhanger).

But as negotiations dragged on, it became clear that Broderbund's enthusiasm for POP3 was cooling. The year's biggest hits — Doom, The 7th Guest, and Broderbund's own Myst — were all 3D, and showcased new technologies. 2D platform games were no longer hot. In January 1994, they passed.

Cut to three years later, spring 1997: The Last Express was finally shipping (late and over budget). I was exhausted and broke. I'd spent all my personal capital, including my royalties from POP 1 and 2, to finish the game; Smoking Car had no second title in the works.

At about that time, Broderbund's Andrew Pedersen informed me he'd been tasked to lead a team to develop a new Prince of Persia sequel internally — in 3D. It would be a flagship title of their newly-formed games division, Red Orb Entertainment (an anagram for "Broder"). Would I be interested in consulting on the project?

By 1997, Broderbund had evolved far from its early-1980s roots as a games publisher (Apple Galaxian, Choplifter, Lode Runner, Karateka...) to focus on edutainment and productivity software. With the significant exceptions of Prince of Persia and Myst, they rarely released a game that didn't have "Carmen Sandiego" in the title. This was good business, but frustrating for people within Broderbund who loved games. The creation of Red Orb gave them a long-awaited chance.

I liked Andrew and the team — we knew each other from Prince 1 and 2 days — and understood that what they wanted from me was feedback consistent with the path they were already on. Upper management had designated POP 3D as an internal project, one they would build a studio around. It would be awkward to have the franchise creator (who wasn't an employee and had no position in the company) come in and shake things up with different ideas. So I kept my Broderbund consulting visits to a polite minimum, and followed my instinct to not get too involved.

The villain the team had already done concept art for — the prince's cousin, a man-beast named Rugnor — had nothing to do with the finale I'd planned for POP's 2D trilogy (the sorceress and Jaffar). I limited my story input to helping them streamline and tighten the cinematic sequences. Their approach to adapting platforms and traps to 3D was a bit close for comfort to 1996's Tomb Raider (which, to be fair, owed a lot to Prince of Persia — but that didn't change the problem).

At an early game design meeting, someone remarked: "Lara Croft is basically Prince of Persia with boobs and a gun." This raised the obvious challenge: "So how is POP 3D not basically Tomb Raider with a dude with baggy pants and a sword?" The answers to this question never fully satisfied.

The POP 3D team had to not only make a game, but establish a new game development pipeline, using a technology they had little previous experience with, in a new division of a company where games weren't part of the culture. The ongoing corporate drama (Broderbund was acquired in 1998 by The Learning Company, which was then acquired by Mattel) added to the project's difficulties as Red Orb's budget, mandate, and overlords kept changing. It's a credit to the team that they shipped.

After it shipped

Many players over the years have told me that they enjoyed POP 3D and remember it with affection. I'm embarrassed to say that I only played it as far as level 2. My excuse is that my PC always crashed at that point (likely a graphics card bug). The deeper reason is that 1999-2000 was a period in which I stepped away from games to focus on screenwriting, and on becoming a parent.

Somewhat opportunistically, I wrote a spec script for a Prince of Persia movie, with John McTiernan attached to direct. (The storyline was unconnected to either POP 3D or the later Sands of Time). It never got made.

Then the phone rang. Yves Guillemot, CEO of the fast-growing French publisher Ubisoft, was calling from Paris. They'd acquired the games portfolio of Mattel/TLC, which had recently imploded, and... well, you can read that story over on The Sands of Time page.

1999 POP 3D got somewhat dropped from the PR narrative in ensuing years, as The Sands of Time's success made Prince of Persia a global franchise, then a Disney movie. A game with technical and game play issues that hadn't met sales expectations wasn't the sexiest episode to discuss in interviews.

I'm glad Players took time to write about it on its 27th anniversary. My thanks to them, and to everyone in Kyiv and Ukraine carrying on with life under the incredibly difficult conditions of constant danger and daily missile attacks. Book publishers and distributors have especially been targeted in recent weeks.

For those curious, I've posted elsewhere about the original Prince of Persia's various ports, its box art, and the 30th anniversary of POP 2. You can subscribe to the RSS feed to be informed of new blog posts.