Prince of Persia 1 for Amstrad CPC

The Grand Vizier has captured the Sultan's daughter and has given her an ultimatum - either marry him, or die! You have one hour in which to get out of the dungeons and rescue her from her cell before the Grand Vizier kills her. Each level sees you fighting guardians and finding the way out, and there are potions to be drunk, too. This was also the first game ever to feature real animation, where the characters really do move properly, and the number of actions you can perform are astonishing. The graphics are incredible, especially the intro sequence, and really, the only bad thing about this game is the awful 'music', which thankfully isn't present in the main game.

Prince Of Persia was an instant classic on the 16-bit machines that followed the Amstad, Spectrum and C64 because of the fluid moving graphics and realism that the main player gave.

The story goes a little something like this, sorry I have lost the original storyline to the game and the CPC version isn't written in English. You have been held captive in the dungeons of the emporer and have been given a chance to escape but you must completely escape the dungeons without being killed in a fall or by the guards who have been instructed to kill you at first sight. If you make it out alive in the 60 minutes you have been allocated you will be allowed to go free and see your wife again, if on the other hand you do not survive or make it through the 60 minutes you will spend eternity in the dungeons.

This is your chance to escape, it may be your only chance so it's up to you the player to get the prince out of the dungeons before the unspeakable happens. Like I said earlier Prince Of Persia was a classic on machines such as the Amiga and Atari ST but surely the conversion to lower machines would mean dropping the frames, removing luxuries and basicaly changing everything - wouldn't it?

Graphics

Well the answer to your question is no, nothing has been dropped from the conversion and it looks, sounds and plays just as well as your 16-bit versions - shocked? so were we!

The graphics are superb, your character can run, jump, creep and kill just like a real person would do in real life. What made the game stand out so much on the 16-bit machines was the fluid motions of your character and indeed the other characters in the game, well you'll be happy to know that the CPC version containts all of that and a little bit more. There are no bad points about the graphics in this conversion, we didn't find any bugs and the color scheme is almost identical.

Sound

Sound is the same, everything has been converted, the music, cracks, thuds, spears, everything is here just at a slightly lower sound quality. Broderbund have done a great job in converting this game even up to this awesome soundtrack.

Gameplay & Final Comment

Gameplay is a dream, if you have played Flashback or Another World you will instantly get to like the way this game moves and works. The controls are relatively easy and providing you time everything down to the last second you should be able to make your way through the dungeons in one piece - but be careful, the game wasn't easy on the 16-bit platforms and as this is a straight conversion it certainly isn't any easier on the Amstrad. If you want to see the early stages of Flashback and Another World then grab a copy of Prince Of Persia - you'll love it.