Prince of Persia review - Super Nintendo

Oh no! While the Sultan of Persia has been out and about putting infidels to the sword, his evil Prime Minister Jaffar has seized power in a coup that has severe repercussions for the Far Eastern World. All he needs to do to make his seizure of power complete is to wed the Sultan's beautiful daughter and claim power through her birthright.

However, her boyfriend has other ideas and sets out to do over the evil Jaffar. However, Jaffar gets wind of the plot and dispatches his guards to find our hero and lock him up! You start the game in the depths of the palace's dungeon. Unarmed and vulnerable to all sorts of danger, it's your job to guide the heroic Persian through the twenty levels of Jaffar's palace, negotiating the many traps and fighting the evil one's many possessed minions in search of the beautiful princess.

However, time is running out for the princess. Jaffar has given her but two hours to decide whether to marry him or die a horrific, painful death. You MUST rescue the fair princess and slay the twisted Jaffar before it's too late for her and too late for all of Persia...

What the Mean Machines staff thought

As I said when I reviewed the Master System version, Prince of Persia is one of my all-time faves on the PC, but this Super NES version is just something else! All of the graphics have been substantially spruced up with superior animation, sprites and some stunning backgrounds. The actual size of the game has also been increased to a huge twenty level! Prince of Persia's main asset, however, is the sheer fun you get playing it. The control method takes some getting used to, but once you've got it sussed, you're able to pull off some of the most spectacular stunts yet seen in a video game! The game is full of original ideas and cunning puzzles too. I particularly liked the appearance of your ghostly twin who helps you solve a highly devious puzzle. For sheer fun and excitement, Prince of Persia cannot be beaten. Buy it!

If you're after a challenge that'll tax your platforming skills to their utmost, prince of Persia is the one for you. It's a massive game and features one of the most demanding gaming environments I've ever run, swung and jumped my way through - and to top it all, the entire game is played against an extremely tight time limit! Because of the highly challenging gameplay, the going does get occasionally frustrating, but such is the quality of the gameplay that you just keep sticking at it to see what's around the next corner - I played it virtually non stop for an entire weekend when I first got it! Backing up the brilliant gameplay are some superb graphics. What you can't see from the screenshots is the incredible, fluid animation of all the sprites - this is a truly cartoon quality game. Prince of Persia is a fabulous game.

Have your say about this review

Jesus Christ - 01 Mar 2009, 03:57 GMT

You guys need to get your facts straight. Superior animation? What? It's FRAME-FOR-FRAME exactly the same animations as every single other version out there! There are a few new death animations (for the new traps) and the "hug" animation at the end is different, but all the running, jumping, climbing, and fighting animations are, for good reason, completely unchanged. Also, Persia (currently known as "Iran") is not in the "Far East." It's in the Middle East. Have you not watched the news since well before Prince Of Persia came out? How do you not know the difference between the Far East and the Middle East?

Dan - 15 Apr 2009, 13:14 GMT

This was absolute quality. Another tough as old boots game but it was a sheer joy to play, with some of the level design (especially the later ones) being as good as you could find. In fact it wasn't until the later levels that you really got stuck into this sexy beast of a game.

Btw JC, wots got ur goat? Me's a thinkin this guy 1) Isn't actually Jesus 2) is missing the entire point of this site 3) belongs in insult corner as Daniel Read's love sheep.

Richy Girth - 07 May 2009, 13:50 GMT

Yeah the other versions of the game on the Amiga and the ST were animated much the same, but the level of graphical detail on the main sprite was better. The original version was little more than a cartoonish head on a white, undetailed looking body.
This could be why Rich Leadbetter rated this version as "superior".
animation wise... But thaen again its just as likely that he was judging it against much animation in other games at the time...

GM - 18 Jul 2010, 05:05 GMT

The SNES version has more levels, new bosses, stage music and better sprites and backgrounds, but for some reason, this version never sat too well with me and I would prefer the DOS version. I guess it's purely based on nostalgia.

Though I would still prefer the SNES version over the garbage nextgen remake of PoP1 by Ubisoft currently available on the Playstation 3 Network, which eliminated virtually all the challenge and fun.

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