--- product_id: 118476400 title: "The Making of Prince of Persia (Mechner Journals Series Book 2)" price: "€ 12.45" currency: EUR in_stock: false reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.hr/products/118476400-the-making-of-prince-of-persia-mechner-journals-series-book store_origin: HR region: Croatia --- # The Making of Prince of Persia (Mechner Journals Series Book 2) **Price:** € 12.45 **Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Making of Prince of Persia (Mechner Journals Series Book 2) - **How much does it cost?** € 12.45 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Currently out of stock - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.hr](https://www.desertcart.hr/products/118476400-the-making-of-prince-of-persia-mechner-journals-series-book) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Before Prince of Persia was a best-selling video game franchise and a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, it was an Apple II computer game created and programmed by one person, Jordan Mechner. Mechner's candid and revealing journals from the time capture his journey from his parents' basement to the forefront of the fast-growing 1980s video game industry... and the creative, technical and personal struggles that brought the prince into being and ultimately into the homes of millions of people worldwide. == What Other Creators Say == "Jordan's journals are remarkable. I so wish I had kept a similar record. Reading them transports me back to that place and time. We all knew this was an exciting new industry, but I don't think we had any clue what it was going to turn into during our careers. There were no schools, no books, no theories covering what we were doing. Everyone was just figuring it out on their own. Following Jordan's creative path is a great example of how to go with your own gut instinct. It's also a great inspiration, showing how persistence and determination can lead to unexpected and wonderful results." -- Will Wright, game designer, creator of The Sims "Mechner's journals are a time machine that takes us back to a weirdly familiar era, when ambitious young creators were making strange new video games all by themselves and making up the rules as they went. It is not a retrospective; instead, it is a present-tense diary written by the creator throughout the creation of his most influential work. It is a humbling and inspiring record of what it was like to make one of the best video games of all time. I love these journals." -- Adam "Atomic" Saltsman, game designer, creator of Canabalt "When an industry is brand-new, its innovators are generally so busy creating the future that they rarely have time to document the present. Luckily, Jordan Mechner did. With these journals, we can track the development of Prince of Persia from a few penciled squiggles to a global franchise. For anyone aspiring to create a game -- or any endeavor that takes months and man-hours -- Jordan's journal is sobering and inspiring." -- John August, screenwriter of Go, Big Fish and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory == About the Author == Jordan Mechner is a game designer, screenwriter, filmmaker, and graphic novelist. He created Prince of Persia, Karateka, and The Last Express. His graphic novel Solomon's Thieves is also featured on desertcart. Review: Vivid, inspiring, and an amazing recount of an interesting period in game development. - It's been awhile since I read a book that I liked so much. Prince of Persia was a game I grew up with, like many people out there. And Jordan's name recently popped up in the press again when he found the Prince of Persia source code and was able to extract it from the vintage discs. Perhaps the perfect time to jump into his memoirs. This really is an amazing recount of Jordan's life during this period of time, as well as how this game came to be. You don't often get a behind-the-scenes tour like this one, let alone years later. Reading this happened at a good time for me personally, as I had just moved to San Francisco. So reading about a person living here, but years prior, it became pretty surreal. And theirs a huge nostalgic power surrounding prince of persia in general for me. So please, factor the bias into my fantastic review. But, in all honesty, these memoirs are extremely well-written. The story has a way of sucking you in. After reading it, you feel like you experienced it yourself, or could at least make a moderately accurate made-for-tv movie detailing the events. It's worth the money, it's worth your time. I'd recommend it to gamers and non-gamers alike. It's just a solid piece of literature, and it applies to a wide audience, I can't imagine someone reading this and not enjoying it. Review: Fascinating diary full of great observations - I remember very well those countless hours I spent playing Prince & Prince 2. I played it on various PCs I had access to back then, 20 years ago. I played it slow and I played it fast, in black&white (monochrome), and in color, with a beeper, and a soundcard. Before I had a soundcard, I made myself a Covox, soldering a bunch of resistors together, and Prince was the very first game I tested my poor-man digital sound interface against. It was mind-blowing when I first heard the game samples. In the next few months I went as far as ripping then the samples out of the game and writing a few songs myself featuring voices from the game. In brief, Prince left quite a mark and it's really unforgettable - it brought me & my friends so much happiness and joy. So I was really thrilled to read through this book and know how the game was actually done. It's unbelievable by modern standards! I was always amazed by how games were written single handedly back then, but I still couldn't believe what I just read now. Aside from extremely interesting descriptions of the development and product management process, the book is full of invaluable insights about the life of a programmer, and the internals of a game publisher. It brought back all those memories from 20-25 years ago when I was a kid hacking around, "cracking" nearly all the games I had for "infinite lives". I "fixed" all the games I had, myself (so that I could play them till the very end), but Prince. To the best of my recollection, I used to play Prince without cheating :) It also reminded me of how I dreamed of writing games myself (and I actually wrote some very bad ones!) only to discover I don't really have neither talent for that, nor stamina. I'm currently involved in a software company, and I have certain relation to project & product management, and seeing how our guys code, I can really appreciate the confessions of this diary. Huge kudos to Jordan for publishing it. I had this thought so many times through this book - it would have been extremely sad if Jordan didn't have enough strength and tenacity to finish the game back then! I was almost like "Please please finish it, dude! We really need it!" all the way through the chapters :) Again, it's still unbelievable after so many years how really groundbreaking the game became. ## Features - Highlight, take notes, and search in the book ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #691,699 in Kindle Store ( See Top 100 in Kindle Store ) #147 in Video & Computer Games #161 in Computer & Video Game Strategy Guides #497 in Video & Electronic Games | ## Images ![The Making of Prince of Persia (Mechner Journals Series Book 2) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81zmIRi9QNL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Vivid, inspiring, and an amazing recount of an interesting period in game development. *by M***O on May 25, 2012* It's been awhile since I read a book that I liked so much. Prince of Persia was a game I grew up with, like many people out there. And Jordan's name recently popped up in the press again when he found the Prince of Persia source code and was able to extract it from the vintage discs. Perhaps the perfect time to jump into his memoirs. This really is an amazing recount of Jordan's life during this period of time, as well as how this game came to be. You don't often get a behind-the-scenes tour like this one, let alone years later. Reading this happened at a good time for me personally, as I had just moved to San Francisco. So reading about a person living here, but years prior, it became pretty surreal. And theirs a huge nostalgic power surrounding prince of persia in general for me. So please, factor the bias into my fantastic review. But, in all honesty, these memoirs are extremely well-written. The story has a way of sucking you in. After reading it, you feel like you experienced it yourself, or could at least make a moderately accurate made-for-tv movie detailing the events. It's worth the money, it's worth your time. I'd recommend it to gamers and non-gamers alike. It's just a solid piece of literature, and it applies to a wide audience, I can't imagine someone reading this and not enjoying it. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Fascinating diary full of great observations *by A***W on July 5, 2014* I remember very well those countless hours I spent playing Prince & Prince 2. I played it on various PCs I had access to back then, 20 years ago. I played it slow and I played it fast, in black&white (monochrome), and in color, with a beeper, and a soundcard. Before I had a soundcard, I made myself a Covox, soldering a bunch of resistors together, and Prince was the very first game I tested my poor-man digital sound interface against. It was mind-blowing when I first heard the game samples. In the next few months I went as far as ripping then the samples out of the game and writing a few songs myself featuring voices from the game. In brief, Prince left quite a mark and it's really unforgettable - it brought me & my friends so much happiness and joy. So I was really thrilled to read through this book and know how the game was actually done. It's unbelievable by modern standards! I was always amazed by how games were written single handedly back then, but I still couldn't believe what I just read now. Aside from extremely interesting descriptions of the development and product management process, the book is full of invaluable insights about the life of a programmer, and the internals of a game publisher. It brought back all those memories from 20-25 years ago when I was a kid hacking around, "cracking" nearly all the games I had for "infinite lives". I "fixed" all the games I had, myself (so that I could play them till the very end), but Prince. To the best of my recollection, I used to play Prince without cheating :) It also reminded me of how I dreamed of writing games myself (and I actually wrote some very bad ones!) only to discover I don't really have neither talent for that, nor stamina. I'm currently involved in a software company, and I have certain relation to project & product management, and seeing how our guys code, I can really appreciate the confessions of this diary. Huge kudos to Jordan for publishing it. I had this thought so many times through this book - it would have been extremely sad if Jordan didn't have enough strength and tenacity to finish the game back then! I was almost like "Please please finish it, dude! We really need it!" all the way through the chapters :) Again, it's still unbelievable after so many years how really groundbreaking the game became. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ An engaging story about the challenges of solo development. *by A***) on July 26, 2013* Though I purchased and devoured this book in the hopes that it would dive deep into the specific technical challenges of building a rather vast game on a limited platform, Mechner's journals run the gamut from trying to get the best video transfer of self-recorded footage of the prince running or jumping to his quest to get a screenplay produced. Ultimately, the book was an interesting look at what it was like for Mechner to take on this enormous task completely by himself and the emotional tribulations he underwent while balancing the development of the game against the development of himself as a young person with time and money and no clear idea of how he wanted to spend either. If you are looking for a technical breakdown of the game and its workings, the source code is out in the wild and plenty of analysis has been done; that is not this book. This is an inside view of its inspiration, creation, and Mechner's journey through it. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.hr/products/118476400-the-making-of-prince-of-persia-mechner-journals-series-book](https://www.desertcart.hr/products/118476400-the-making-of-prince-of-persia-mechner-journals-series-book) --- *Product available on Desertcart Croatia* *Store origin: HR* *Last updated: 2026-08-12*