Jordan Mechner

Jordan Mechner
Jordan Mechner at WonderCon 2010
Born (1964-06-04) June 4, 1964
New York City
Nationality American
Occupation Video game designer, screenwriter, author, filmmaker
Known for Creator of Prince of Persia
Spouse(s)
Whitney Hills (m. 2014)
[1]

Jordan Mechner (born June 4, 1964)[2] is an American video game designer, author, screenwriter, and filmmaker. He is best known for designing and programming the Apple II games Karateka and Prince of Persia in the 1980s, the latter of which grew into a multi-platform franchise. Both games were published by Broderbund. Prince of Persia was rebooted as a modern game in 2001 by Ubisoft with Mechner's involvement.

Early life

Mechner was born in New York City, into a family of European Jewish immigrants, and his father is psychologist Francis Mechner.[3][4] He attended Yale University in the 1980s.[5][6][7]

Career

While at Yale, Mechner wrote several Apple II games that he submitted for publication, but which were rejected. Asteroid Blaster, an Asteroids clone, was submitted to Hayden Software and abstract arcade game Deathbounce to Brøderbund. He then spent two years at Yale writing his first published game, Karateka (1984), which went to number one on the Billboard software chart.

His second game, Prince of Persia, was released in 1989 after more than three years of work. He wrote both games in 6502 assembly language for the Apple II, though that system was in decline through the late 1980s and little new software was released by 1989. Initially Prince of Persia sold poorly, but as it was ported to other systems sales increased. Eventually it was adapted for nearly every computer and console platform.

Following the completion of Prince of Persia Mechner took several years off from the gaming industry, during which he attended film school, wrote an unproduced screenplay, and traveled Europe for two years.[8]

Mechner designed and directed the first sequel, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, released in 1993. By then, he was focused on game design and story mechanics and was no longer programming.

Mechner founded independent developer Smoking Car Productions in 1993, where he led the production of the CD-ROM adventure game The Last Express.[8] Smoking Car grew to sixty people,[9] a huge game development team for the mid-1990s, and the game took longer to finish than anticipated. When finally released in 1997, it was positively reviewed but sold poorly. The Last Express was re-released in 2012 by French publisher DotEmu for mobile and other platforms.

Mechner's first four games were all published by Brøderbund.

Prince of Persia revival

In 2001, Mechner worked with Ubisoft to reboot Prince of Persia. Developed at Ubisoft Montreal with Mechner as game designer, writer and creative consultant, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was released in 2003. It received 12 nominations and 8 awards at the Interactive Achievement Awards (D.I.C.E.).[10] Ubisoft has since published four more Prince of Persia sequels and several spinoffs.

Mechner became one of the few video game creators to adapt his own creation as a feature film with Disney's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Mike Newell, and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, and Alfred Molina. Disney released Prince of Persia movie on May 28, 2010. Mechner wrote the first drafts of the screenplay and is an executive producer of the film.

Writing and directing

In 2003, Mechner wrote and directed the documentary film, Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story. It won the 2003 IDA award for Best Short Documentary, was short-listed for an Academy Award nomination, and received its broadcast premiere on PBS Independent Lens in 2005.[11]

Mechner collaborated with a team on the 2008 Prince of Persia graphic novel. Mechner's completely original graphic novel Templar was published in July 2013.[12][13] Templar became a New York Times best-selling book and was nominated for an Eisner award.[14] Mechner also wrote the graphic novel, Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm, to tie in with the release of the film in 2010.

Mechner has written a screenplay for a film adaptation of Michael Turner's Fathom for Fox Studios with actress Megan Fox.[15]

Mechner self-published two volumes of his game development journals from the 1980s, one describing the making of Karateka and the other on Prince of Persia.[16] Mechner was able to recover the source code of the Prince of Persia game from recently found 23-year-old 3.5″ Apple ProDOS floppy disks[17] and posted it online.[18]

Gameography

TitleYearPlatformPublisher
Karateka1984Apple IIBroderbund
Prince of Persia1989Apple IIBroderbund
Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame1993MS-DOSBroderbund
The Last Express1997Windows, MS-DOS, Classic Mac OSBroderbund
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time2003PlayStation 2, XboxUbisoft
Karateka2012Xbox 360D3 Publisher

Bibliography

TitleYearPublisherCollaborators
Templar2013First Second BooksLeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland (illus.)
The Making of Karateka: Journals 1982-19852012Amazon
The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-19932010Amazon
Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm2010DisneyTodd McFarlane, Bernard Chang, Cameron Stewart, et al. (illus.)
Solomon's Thieves (Templar: Book One)2010First Second BooksLeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland (illus.)
Prince of Persia: The Graphic Novel2008First Second BooksA.B. Sina (writer), LeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland (illus.)

Filmography

References

  1. ↑ Mechner, Jordan (7 April 2014). "Jordan Mechner on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 3 October 2014.
  2. ↑ Mechner, J.: "Blog 4 June 1989", Jordan Mechner's website
  3. ↑ "The Last Express: Video Game as Art – 25fps". 25fps.cz.
  4. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2017-10-20. Retrieved 2015-08-25.
  5. ↑ Steve Fulton (September 29, 2014). "What Indie Game Developers Can Learn From Jordan Mechner's Book "The Making Of Karateka"". Gamasutra. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  6. ↑ "How Prince of Persia's famous jump animation was made / Boing Boing". boingboing.net.
  7. ↑ Charles McGrath (May 21, 2010). "A Gamer's World, but a Dramatist's Sensibility". The New York Times. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  8. 1 2 "An Interview with Jordan Mechner". Next Generation. No. 25. Imagine Media. January 1997. p. 108.
  9. ↑ "Jordan Mechner - The Last Express". jordanmechner.com.
  10. ↑ Prince of Persia award page from Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences website
  11. ↑ "Independent Lens . CHAVEZ RAVINE - PBS". www.pbs.org.
  12. ↑ "Templar: historical caper graphic novel from Prince of Persia creator / Boing Boing". boingboing.net.
  13. ↑ "From Games to Comics: First Second's Prince of Persia OGN".
  14. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-10-06. Retrieved 2014-04-21.
  15. ↑ "Megan Fox to star in 'Fathom'" from Variety
  16. ↑ "Jordan Mechner - Journals". jordanmechner.com.
  17. ↑ Raiders of the Lost Archives page on Mechner's personal site
  18. ↑ Mechner, Jordan (7 November 2017). "Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II: A running-jumping-swordfighting game I made on the Apple II from 1985-89" – via GitHub.
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