14 DAY TRIAL // Just a little while ago we talked about the original Prince of Persia (developed by Jordan Mechner), coming to Xbox Live Arcade, under the name of Prince of Persia Classic, revamped and all tweaked up. We're here today to sum it all up for you to make a better picture of what's going to be soon available on Microsoft's Internet service, as some people have already gotten their hands on it.
First of all, the game's name says pretty much everything about it. If you're a true fan of the series (and I mean true fan as in played-the-almost-black-and-white-PC-original), then you're sure to notice that not much has changed. The story still revolves around the princess and the evil vizier Jaffar, who wants to marry her against her will, while you, the brave prince and the priness's true love, will have to rescue her before the sand from the hourglass finishes to fall.
Prince of Persia Classic has been developed by Gameloft, mostly known for carrying out work on mobile games, so if you have played some of the mobile versions, you'll see some familiarities such as the torches and the light streaming through the windows.
In total, there are 14 levels, as Gamespot reports, where gamers have to be really careful not to fall onto the beds of spikes, or get killed by the vizier's minions. The gameplay still incorporates that lagging movement of the prince, where it takes him a moment to fully stop after running or even making one step.
The puzzles are there, while the upper and beneath levels are also there. It's not at all the button mashing frenzy started by The Sands of Time, although the prince's model looks fairly similar. The rest, you can figure out for yourselves, as there may be some who haven't seen the original, so let's not spoil it for them.
Oh, Gamespot also says that in their opinion, the game should be priced somewhere at 800 points (for download via XBLA), not that they're "dropping hints or anything." I back that statement up. Everyone deserves to see where it all started, even if everything has been tweaked up. There's nothing that can beat the classics and if there were, there still wouldn't be anything out there to beat Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia.