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The PC version will be a completely different codebase.

The Apple ][ source code that's been posted to github is all in 6502 assembler. PC's ran (and still run) on x86. Even all the graphics are encoded into 6502 assembler - there'd be zero common code between the two versions.

Jordan Mechner's journals of the time he spent working on Prince of Persia 1 and 2 are on his site, and they are an amazingly interesting read. These aren't blogs, in the modern sense, where the content is exclusively about the development, they're his personal journals, and reading them feels like modern archaeology digging up fragments of the game industry as it was, and the hardware that was used, and it's a good personal story, too, since being his personal journals, they're mostly concerning Jordan's life at the time. I really recommend you check them out. To my point, though, the journals contain some interesting stuff about the development process on the Apple II and the Macintosh, and the lengths he went to to port it to PC.

When I worked at a police station it was a very popular game (together with Wolfenstein). I never liked it either, probably because it had to be played using the keyboard while as a Commodore 64 and Amiga user I was used to joysticks.

As I recall it was mainly the graphics and animation what excited people. The game itself never impressed me. Probably because I had played a lot of games by then and most people back then only were able to play games at work or had an Atari 2600.

At work I preferred to play X-Wing, which wasn't easy to control with a mouse either.

Wolf3D*. How had I forgotten about that game? I loved Wolfenstine so much.

Was that really around the same time as Prince of Persia? I though it was more recent than that.

I could see the appeal of PoP for the graphics, but the game play always felt a little sluggish for it. I guess I was just used to 2 frame sprites

* though Wolf-pseudo-3D would have been a more accurate name. More than 8 chars though.

Edited 2012-04-17 13:13 UTC

Too lazy to ask Google, but I think Wolf 3D predated Pop. I'm guessing this because PoP showed up at the police station after Wolf 3D.

If you enjoy Wolf 3D and have a ZX Spectrum around doing nothing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzm9KkJ5lGI

Okay, I looked it up.

PoP was released for the Apple ][ in 1989 and for DOS and the Amiga in 1990. Wolfenstein 3D was released for DOS in 1992.

In 1994 PoP 2 was released. I worked at the police station between 1993 and 1995.

My guess is after people got bored with Wolfenstein 3D the sequel to PoP made the rounds.

You maybe should've included a few dozen smileys here and there, since that "them" might just not be enough for survival

Anyway, events like this can make my day. It's really a nice experience to be able to go back to such old memories and look at them with a really "deeper" look, right down to these sources, it's just plain fun.

Heh, yes as someone who first learned programming back on the c64 in 6502 assembly (turbo assembler FTW!) stuff like this brings me sweet nostalgia.

Also I really liked Prince of Persia (unlike Mechner's previous game Karateka). There's a recent 'reverse engineered' remake made for the C64 here together with an interesting devlog:

http://popc64.blogspot.se/2011/10/prince-of-persia-for-commodore-64...

Bet he would have loved to have had this source code and is likely having alot of fun right now comparing the way he solved certain things compared to Mechner.

I voted +1 funny but actually it's not funny at all but a sad reality.

Adam, please add an +1 sad reality voting option. Using JS, of course.

Having written my share of 6510 and 68k assembly, I looked at the linked source code and thought to myself "thank god we're not writing things in assembly any more". There are already too many moments when I wish I was using more Python and less C++ at work.

Assembler code does look very cool.

I wrote a fairly large (for the time) GA flight displays package in 6502 assembler for NASA back in 1983 (I think). We took it to the Oshkosh Air Show, running on two Atari 800s and the flight sim proper on a small minicomputer, all linked with RS-232.

While I mostly write Python now (when I have time to code at all), the one thing I miss about those halcyon days is that I controlled every single machine instruction running on each 6502. And given De Re Atari, I've never had as deep of an understanding of any machine before or since. Well, except perhaps the CPU I designed and built as my senior project - but it lacked a good display processor. :-D

Abstraction is great, but sometimes you need to understand what's happening at the bare metal.

Raspberry Pi, perhaps? ;-)

This makes me remember my 8 year old self being blown away by being able to hear things like footsteps, tiles crashing down on you, and sword noises when we added an original 8-bit Sound Blaster to our 286.