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Prince of Persia for TruboGrafx 16

Screenshots

Riverhill Soft:
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Hudson Soft:
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Review

Jordan Mechner is one of the few people involved with the game industry, along with Eric Chahi (Out of this World, Flashback), Geoff Crammond (Stunt Car Racer, Formula One Grand Prix), David Braben (Elite, Frontier), among others, that can really be considered "game creators". I'm not discoloring some other geniuses of game's world, but it's really amazing to realize the guys above mentioned have created some of their masterpieces without any help, virtually alone (programming, graphics and sound)!

Well, Jordan Mechner made his first bombastic appearance with the now cult game "Karateka", released by Broderbund and present on almost 100% of Apple II machines and in lots of PC-XT, at that time. Some years later, Jordan released his most amazing creation, a game which had been converted for almost every computer and videogame system existent in the world: Prince of Persia.

At that time, it was hard to find a single person who didn't become speechless in front of the outstanding movements of the main characters, and probably wondering "how did this guy make it?". Prince of Persia have all the needed qualifications to be considered a huge game: amazing graphics, excellent playability, wide range of different game styles (action, puzzle, RPG)...indeed, a near perfect game.

Prince of Persia was converted to PC-ENGINE by Riverhill Soft and, I must say, it was a heck of a conversion! It has similar graphics to "Prince of Persia 2", truly well-done, gorgeous playability, some nice designed animated sequences and, specially, one of the best soundtracks made for a PC-ENGINE game...and Prince of Persia was already outstanding only with the boring "blip-blops" on Apple II!

Prince of Persia is a masterpiece. We can only say thanks to Jordan Mechner, for the creation of this wonderful game, and to Riverhill Soft, for its utterly brilliant PC-ENGINE conversion! Marcelo Reis.

From http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/princeofpersia/princeofpersia.htm: The TG16 version, by Riverhill Soft, looks somewhat similar, also has the speed option, and somewhat different CD music (although they do share some tracks) but none of the cool cutscenes.

Differences

Just a quick note for those who don't know what the differences between NEC PC-ENGINE platform (PC-9801) (Japan localized version - 1991) and TurboGrafx-16 (CD) are. The latter is the American version (The TurboGrafx-16 was the first video game console in North America to have a CD-ROM peripheral) of the Japanese PC Engine, both made by NEC in the late 80's, early 90's.

NEC PC-ENGINE (PC-9801): Riverhill Soft (argent) was released on - 6 November 1991.

PoP

TurboGrafx-16 CD: Hudson Soft was released on - 1992.

PoP

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The TurboDuo is essentially a combination of TurboGrafx-16 and TurboGrafx-CD hardware, plus the Super System BIOS + extra 192k RAM built-in to the motherboard...

Platform
TurboDuo

Developer
Hudson Soft Co., Ltd.

Publisher
Turbo Technologies, Inc.

Downloads

Download:
Prince of Persia (J) part 1
Prince of Persia (J) part 2

(U) http://www.neoromcollector.net/tgcd/prince.htm Download ISO: Part 1 (95.7 MB) Part 2 (95.7 MB) Part 3 (86.2 MB).

You will need any emulator that supports those two platforms/consoles.

Walkthrough

Turbo Empire Strategy Guide : Prince of Persia:
http://www.atari7800.com/turbo/tricknology/prince_of_persia.htm

Video walkthrough

Level 1-2: http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view1000720.html
Level 3-4: http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view1000640.html
Level 5-6-7: http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view1000567.html
Level 8: http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view1000527.html
level 9: http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view1000485.html
Level 10-11: http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view1000412.html
Level 12: http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view1000374.html
The End: http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view1000337.html

Speedrun

You can speed up your game, hence you can play it quickly by bypassing the guards (jumping over them), etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz6yYVLXqnI (Prince of Persia 1 completed within 10 minutes under the NEC PC-9801 platform/Japan localized version - 1991).

MP3s

Turbografx-16 - Level 1
TRACK 3
TRACK 5

How to run PoP1 PC-98

Download PoP1 PC-98 rom (Arsys Software, 1990):

pc98prince.zip (736 KB)

To run the game properly, use one of the following emulators (there are many emulators; however, some of them don't support the .FDI extension) (the second one is better):

Anex86: https://www.zophar.net/pc98/anex86.html
Select DISK_A.FDI for FDD1 and DISK_B.FDI for FDD2 and click on Start

Neko Project II: https://www.zophar.net/pc98/neko-project-ii.html
FDD1 -> open DISK_A.FDI
FDD2 -> open DISK_B.FDI
Emulate -> Reset

Use full screen mode for a better look.

Covers

TurboGrafx-16 CD: Hudson Soft:

Front cover

Back cover

NEC PC-ENGINE (PC-9801): Riverhill Soft Inc. (ARGENT):

PoP PC-9801 Front Cover