Against the diminishing sands of time, players had to guide the Prince out of his captivity, across 13 levels of chasms, traps and enemies, to the palace tower where the evil Jaffar has the princess held captive. The game itself was a comparatively straightforward platform adventure. Back when motion capture was unheard of in the games industry, Mechner spent months scanning and manipulating the live action footage of his brother, and turning it into the agile character who would become known simply as the Prince.

ItвЂ™s remarkable, in fact, just how effective MechnerвЂ™s deployment of such a simple technique was. Mechner had explored the possibilities of rotoscoping in videogames before вЂ“ his fighting game Karateka was released in 1984, while he was still studying psychology at university вЂ“ but the extraordinarily lifelike characters in 1989вЂ™s Prince Of Persia were unparalleled at the time.

ItвЂ™s now well over 20 years since US programmer Jordan Mechner took some video images of his brother leaping, running, and climbing up walls in a local park, and turned them into the seminal Prince Of Persia.

Prince of persia game