The creator of Prince of Persia has offered new details regarding the canceled final game in the original 2D trilogy.
In his new blog post, Jordan Mechner, the creator of Prince of Persia, mentioned that Ubisoft Montpelier canceled a sequel to Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame in the year 2019. He mentioned that he had wanted the original 2D Prince of Persia series to be a trilogy.
Mechner talked about his graphic memoir, Replay, in which he discusses his story of how Prince of Persia 3 got green-lit, and then canceled twice. He mentioned that it first got canceled in 1993, and then in 2019. It shares the story of today’s game industry, when multimillion-dollar productions involving hundreds of people can be greenlit, morph, change direction, and get cancelled. Additionally, he mentioned that the canceled Prince of Persia 3 would have featured the mysterious sorceress glimpsed at the end of the second game.
He mentioned that the original 2D game series had fizzled out a decade earlier, when his planned third game of the trilogy was cancelled. A 1999 3D reboot from Red Orb had subsequently flopped. Reflecting on the success of Sands of Time, he said that there was something special about the game, but no one in the development team was counting on it to be a hit. The enthusiasm and warm embrace with which fans greeted the game and its universe surpassed the developer’s expectations.
The final game in the original 2D series, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, is a platformer released by Broderbund in 1993 for MS-DOS, later ported to Macintosh, Super NES, and FM Towns. It’s the second installment in the series and a direct sequel to 1989’s Prince of Persia. Both games were designed by Jordan Mechner, though he didn’t program the sequel himself. Players control the Prince as he tries to return to Persia, defeat the evil wizard Jaffar, who has taken his appearance, seized the throne, and put the Princess, his love interest, under a death spell.
