Filed under great pieces of retro news is that a long awaited port of Jordan Mechner’s 1989 platform classic Prince of Persia is within hours of arriving for the Atari 8bit family. It may even be here by the time you read this. Many platforms of the era have been lucky to receive homebrew ports of the game including the C64 and BBC micro but it seemed out of reach for Atari’s computer system that first launched back in 1979. However that didn’t stop AtariAge user rensoup from tackling the challenge. With additional help from fellow AA developers, rensoup has produced something astonishing and if the video below is any indication it might be one of the best versions of the game yet. Personally I think the art style beats not only the original Apple II version but the 16bit computer versions too… it’s that good.

The original thread on AtariAge which contains all the details can be found here – the game was years in the making so there’s a lot to read but it gives you an idea of the challenges faced not only in making best use of the old machine but satisfying the strong opinions of the AA community. I’ve got nothing but respect and admiration for the developers who continue to make magic on these classic systems. And from a user perspective having new games to play on the old machine is always a great feeling too. 🙂