Prince of Persia Then and Now: Why the Original Felt Truly Brutal

The original Prince of Persia came from a harsher era of game design

When people compare the original Prince of Persia to the newer games, I think they often frame it the wrong way. It is not really old versus new in some simple “which one is harder?” debate. It is a clash between two completely different eras of game design. The original was not just difficult. It came from a time when games were more willing to punish you, drain your time, and tell you to deal with it. That legacy still hangs over anything Ubisoft does with the name, something we already touched on when we covered Ubisoft halting development on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake.

I remember playing it on PC, and at the time I had what felt like a beast of a computer. Prince of Persia did not care one bit. It still felt brutal. It still felt dangerous. It still felt like one bad jump, one bad decision, or one wasted minute could ruin the whole run. And if you want a broader angle on why older games and modern re-releases often do not hit the same way, that is something we have brushed against before in our Fighting Force Collection review too.

That is the thing with the original Prince of Persia. Memory has a way of softening some games over time. This one does not. Going back over the history now, and reading more from Jordan Mechner and Ubisoft’s recent 35th anniversary look-back, it is actually clear that the original really was built to feel that way. That pressure was not accidental. It was the point.

Prince of Persia – YouTube Short

Video credit: @pixorphia on YouTube.

The original Prince of Persia had weight to it

One reason the game stood out so much in 1989 was movement. Jordan Mechner used rotoscoping to make the Prince move with a kind of human weight and fragility that many games simply did not have at the time. Ubisoft’s 35th anniversary feature explains how Mechner filmed his brother David running, jumping, climbing, and hanging from ledges in loose white clothing, while their father Francis contributed the music. That family-made, human core is a huge part of why the game still feels special now. The Prince did not move like a cartoon hero. He moved like someone who could actually get hurt.

That matters, because in Prince of Persia, getting hurt felt like it mattered. Every jump had weight. Every ledge felt risky. Every sword fight could go bad quickly. Even now, that old animation still gives the game a kind of tension that a lot of brighter, faster, more technically advanced games never quite manage to create.

Even a single jump in the original Prince of Persia could feel tense and punishing.

It was designed to pressure you, not protect you

The original game gives you one hour. Not one hour per stage. One hour, full stop. That is a massive difference. Ubisoft’s anniversary piece explains that Mechner used the 60-minute clock to create suspense, with the expectation that players would fail early, learn the levels, and get faster on later attempts. That is a very old-school idea. The game did not care about preserving your momentum. It cared about whether you had learned enough to deserve progress.

The DOS manual makes the tone even clearer. You start with three units of strength. Some accidents will hurt you. More serious ones will kill you outright. If you die, you restart at the beginning of the level, but the hourglass keeps draining. That right there is the whole personality of the original game. It does not just punish mistakes. It makes you feel the cost of them.

Even the safety nets were stingy. On the PC version, saving only becomes available once you reach Level 3. Practice mode exists, but it cuts your remaining time to fifteen minutes and explicitly says you cannot win the game that way. There is something almost funny about how little comfort it gives you. The game will let you practise, sure, but it still wants you to know who is in charge.

The danger was not fake

A lot of games say they are deadly. The original Prince of Persia actually felt deadly. Ubisoft describes the deaths as “legendarily extravagant” for the time, and that is exactly the right phrase. The spike traps, the slicers, the sudden collapses, the awkward slumped body after a bad mistake, all of it left a mark. Jordan Mechner even points to Raiders of the Lost Ark as part of the inspiration for that trap-heavy sense of danger. You can feel it. The whole game has that “you are one step away from disaster” energy.

The original Prince of Persia built tension through danger, darkness, and constant pressure.

That is also why I would be careful about casually comparing it to modern entries. Modern Prince of Persia games can still be challenging, stylish, and very good. But they are usually designed to keep players moving. The old game was designed to stop you, punish you, and make you come back sharper.

Why the comparison still feels unfair today

By the time Ubisoft made The Sands of Time, the philosophy had already changed. Ubisoft’s own retrospective says the rewind mechanic came from the desire not to make players die and restart so often. That says everything. The original accepted repetition and frustration as part of mastery. The Sands of Time still respected the series’ movement and danger, but it was already trying to reduce some of the punishment.

Then you look at The Lost Crown and the gap gets even wider. Guided Mode, screenshot pinning on the map, adjustable difficulty, practice spaces, platforming assist, all of that reflects a player-first design culture. That is not a criticism. It is just the truth. These games are built for a different relationship with failure.

So no, I do not think the strongest angle is to say the newer games are a joke. The stronger angle is that the original belongs to a much harsher design era, one that expected you to fail, repeat, adapt, and keep your nerve under pressure. Same franchise, yes. Same design values, absolutely not.

And yes, even the PC memory checks out

One detail I had almost forgotten is that PC players did not all see exactly the same thing. The DOS manual lists support for Hercules monochrome graphics as well as color standards like EGA, CGA, Tandy, and VGA. So if someone remembers the game as darker, flatter, or even close to black and white, that is not necessarily bad memory. It depends on the setup. But no matter how you saw it, the important part stayed the same: the tension was real.

Related reading on Fix Gaming Channel

Ubisoft stops development on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake

Fighting Force Collection Review (Switch) — The Originals Still Hit Harder