We all remember the old, legendary Prince on ancient computers. Back then, they were "furious" machines, but powerful enough for such games. The first Prince was playable in DOS. From then until today, graphic progress has been enormous. The original game was released in 1989, and arrived in Europe two years later. It was published by Broderbund. After several sequels and changes of development studios, the rights to the series were acquired by Ubisoft in 2001, which remains the main holder of the franchise.
Ubisoft did a great job — it was hard to imagine a collection of games without at least one continuation of the Prince of Persia series.
The Sands of Time, developed by Ubisoft Montreal, was particularly impressive to me. The game was released in November 2003 (not 2008) for GBA, PS2, GameCube, Xbox and Windows. It was a kind of reincarnation of the series created by Jordan Mechner, and he actively participated in the development - from the script to the consultation.
Spurred on by the announcement of the 2026 remake, I decided to remember why this game was special.
Preuzthere ismo ulogu beigeimenog Princa iz Perzije. Je land that bila kriza identiteta? Tko zna — važno je da was plemenita roda. :)
For its time, the game was far ahead of the competition – it brought something new, fresh: acrobatics, parkour, combat and amazing time management mechanics.
Prava poslastica bila je trčanje po zidovthere is, preskakanje provalija i akrobatske borbe uz "backflipove", koje su davale dojam vještine – iako ste često bor na rubu poraza.
All this took the game to the sky - in just one year, as many as 2.4 million copies were sold.
Once you get the Dagger of Time, the game becomes even deeper. You can rewind time by 10 seconds or so, correct wrong jumps or save yourself in battle. Collecting the Sands of Time charges a dagger, which you can then use at crucial moments. Time wasn't just used for recovery — you could slow it down or stop it completely, depending on the situation.
Za ono doba, princ is andmao gotovo 780 animiranih pokreta, what je bilo revolucionarno. Kretanje je bilo izuzetno fluidno, gotovo as da gamete u 120 fps — trčanje, rolanje, skakanje, wall run...
The enemies were mostly zombies that you slowed down to make it easier to defeat them.
The atmosphere was magical and mystical. The graphics are a bit blurry, but not in a negative way — the locations felt like you were in a dream. At the same time, the feeling of loneliness dominated — after the cutscene you are left alone, facing opponents and traps.
For me, The Sands of Time is the best part of the series. But how much did that game influence the development of the Assassin's Creed franchise?
Namely, Assassin's Creed emerged from the development project of the Prince of Persia sequel, working title Prince of Persia: Assassins. That project later grew into a completely new and extremely successful franchise. The influence is obvious - especially in parkour, which was even more advanced in the first AC.
U konačnici, hei koji su gameli, znaju koliko je to bilo posebno iskustvo i kakve su "vau" efekte tada prvi put doživjeli — ni ne sluteći da will inskoro come nova franšiza who lasts i danas.
Will the remake coming next year be a hit? We have to see.
