Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia
Genre(s)
Developer(s)
Publisher(s)
Creator(s)Jordan Mechner
Platform(s)
First releasePrince of Persia
October 3, 1989
Latest releasePrince of Persia: The Lost Crown
January 18, 2024

Prince of Persia is a video game franchise created by Jordan Mechner. It is centered around a series of action-adventure games focused on various incarnations of the eponymous Prince, set in ancient and medieval Persia.

The first two games in the series, Prince of Persia (1989) and Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame (1993), were published by Broderbund. Prince of Persia 3D (1999), named for being the first installment to use 3D computer graphics, was developed by Red Orb Entertainment and published by The Learning Company on PC; the Dreamcast version was developed by Avalanche Software and published by Mattel Interactive. Ubisoft bought the rights to the franchise in 2001 and rebooted it with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003). Ubisoft has since developed and published five additional entries in the series: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (2004), Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (2005), Prince of Persia (2008), Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (2010), and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (2024), as well as a number of spin-offs and games for mobile devices.

Outside of the games, the franchise includes a film adaptation based on The Sands of Time, written in part by Mechner, and released by Walt Disney Pictures in 2010; a graphic novel; and the Lego Prince of Persia toyline. Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise is considered to be the spiritual successor to the series.[1][2][3]

  1. ^ "The Making Of: Assassin's Creed | Features | Edge Online". Edge. December 28, 2013. Archived from the original on December 28, 2013. Retrieved April 21, 2018.
  2. ^ The series took inspiration from the novel Alamut by the Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol, while building upon concepts from the Prince of Persia series.
  3. ^ IGN (April 9, 2019), Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot Discusses Company's Past, Present, & Next-Gen Future - IGN Unfiltered #41, archived from the original on December 21, 2021, retrieved April 10, 2019