Jordan Mechner Expo-English

ENGLISH

 

KARATEKA

Karateka was Jordan Mechner’s first video game, developed within two years while studying at Yale University and living in his parents’ basement. The game was programmed in an Apple II and presented to Broderbund Software on a floppy disk. The publisher would release it to market in 1984.

 

The game’s setting is feudal Japan and the story is simple: an evil warlord has kidnapped the protagonist’s girlfriend and he has to make use of his martial skills to fight the villain’s minions and rescue his beloved.

 

Mechner made use of silent film techniques that he had studied previously in his cinema history classes to create a free-flowing game with realistic animations that felt like an action movie. The mechanics were also easy enough that anyone could get quickly trapped.

 

In those days, video games had no marketing campaigns and sales were mainly due to word of mouth. Nevertheless, in April 1985, Billboard Magazine listed Karateka as the best-selling game in the US. Not much later new ports would appear for Commodore 64, Atari, NES, and Game Boy, and total sales amounted to 500.000 copies.

 

Karateka was an important milestone in Jordan Mechner’s life for proving that it was possible to make a living from video games, but also for many other later developers thanks to its efficient design and cinematographic style.

 

LAST EXPRESS

In 1992, after the success of Prince of Persia, Jordan Mechner traveled to Paris for a year to disconnect from video game design, but ironically that trip took him to his most ambitious project in that same field.

 

Published by Broderbund in 1997, with three CD-ROM disks, The Last Express is an immersive adventure that places the protagonist aboard the Orient Express train in 1914, just before the Great War. The game pushes the boundaries of interactive narrative as no game had done before.

 

Developing this title took Mechner four years and required the foundation of a production company called Smoking Car Productions. This company designed and patented a new digital rotoscoping technique to transform filmed images into cartoon animations.

 

In order to recreate the interior of the Orient Express cars with the most detail, the production team searched for construction blueprints, original train timetables, and even visited an abandoned sleeping car at a train yard in Athens, Greece. 3D artist Donald Grahame took hundreds of photographs and measurements to “restore” the luxurious train in every detail, from the embossed leather panels to the hand-turned screws.

 

PRINCE OF PERSIA

Prince of Persia is one of the most popular video games in history and is remembered with great affection by all gamers. It was developed by Jordan Mechner within three years in an Apple II and published by Broderbund Software in 1989. A bit later, Prince of Persia had ports to almost every available system and sold over 2 million copies worldwide.

 

Mechner was involved as director and designer in the sequel, released in 1993, before getting involved with the production of The Last Express. Ten years later, Ubisoft Montreal would retake the license and revive the game with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

 

Just as he did with his first video game, Karateka, in Prince of Persia Mechner used rotoscoping techniques to digitize the movements of the protagonist from videos of his brother performing various stunts dressed in simple white clothes. For the sword fights, Mechner took inspiration from the final duel in the 1938 film Adventures of Robin Hood.

 

At the beginning of the game, we are told that in ancient Persia the Sultan has gone to war and, in his absence, the vizier Jaffar tries to take the throne by forcing the Sultan’s daughter to marry him. The vizier gives the princess one hour to accept willingly. Meanwhile, the unknown protagonist, the princess’ true love, is thrown in the dungeons and he has to escape and make his way through the palace to reach Jaffar before the time ends.

 

The main character design, with clear white robes, was improved in ports for Japanese computers by Arsys Software and Riverhillsoft, giving him the turban and the vest that would later appear in Macintosh port and subsequent adaptations.

 

PRINCE OF PERSIA 2: THE SHADOW AND THE FLAME

After the success of Prince of Persia, a sequel was to arrive, designed by Mechner but programmed this time by Broderbund. The story takes place only eleven days after the protagonist escaped and defeated Jaffar. The Sultan is back and, after knowing about what happened, he has accepted to give his daughter’s hand in marriage to her savior. But the Vizier still has an ace up his sleeve and uses magic to change his appearance and impersonate the main character, while making him look like a beggar. The hero has thus to escape from guards and fight against time to recover his identity and rescue his bride.

 

This game improved the mechanics of the previous one and included more movements, more combat, and bigger levels. Graphics were also greatly improved and became more complex.

 

JORDAN MECHNER

He is an author, screenwriter, producer, director, and video game designer. Mechner was born in New York in 1964 and he studied Psychology at Yale University. While studying, he developed Karateka and, after that, Prince of Persia. In 1993, after directing Prince of Persia 2, he traveled to France to take a break but ended up with a more ambitious project: The Last Express, released in 1997.

 

In 2001, Mechner took part as writer, designer, and consultant with Ubisoft Montreal in the development of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the game that would bring back the franchise. However, Mechner separated himself from Ubisoft’s later titles, not being fully content with the new game’s direction.

 

Turning his career around, in 2003 Mechner wrote and directed the documentary Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story, which won the IDA award as best documentary film.

 

Yet Jordan Mechner did not abandon Prince of Persia and would still write a graphic novel (Prince of Persia: Beyond the Sandstorm) as well as an original script for the live-action movie adaptation of the popular franchise.

 

In 2017, Mechner moved to Montpellier, France, from where he has collaborated with European artists in several graphic novels and has recently published Replay, an auto-biographic graphic novel about his own family history.