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After discovering the Apple II 6502 source code for the original Prince Of Persia had been recovered and uploaded to GitHub by the legendary author Jordan Mechner, Kieran Connell of the Bit Shifters group decided to take it upon himself to port this all-time classic over to the BBC Master computer. Obviously the BBC computer shares the same 6502 CPU, but it was quickly decided they would need to target this at the master range as it would need the entire 128K of memory.

Now this might seem like the game was an easy port, but far from it... as the BBC's hardware had lots of other obstacles that needed to be overcome. I won't explain them all here but I seriously suggest reading the Bit Shifters blog on Git Hub if you want to know all the gory and very technical details!

Prince Of Persia was a massive success on the other home computers and consoles it was released for and the BBC was probably one of the few mainstream machines of its era to not get a port, so it's great to see that this injustice has finally been set right! I don't think I need to tell you what a huge success Prince of Persia was as it went on to spawn multiple sequels and even a big budget Hollywood movie. Perhaps most famously, this game took Jordan Mechner's patented animation techniques, that were first seen in Broderbund's classic Karateka, to a new level and provided some of the most realistic moving character sprites that anyone had ever seen in a video game. If you didn't already know, Prince of Persia is a 2D action-adventure with platformer elements and also lots of emphasis on the fighting. It's a real mish mash of different genres, which is probably one of the reasons it felt so fresh and original when it was released.

The plot tells us that the Grand Vizier Jaffar has thrown you into a dark dungeon and plans to marry the girl of your dreams in exactly 1 hour. You're not going to let that happen are you? You must try to escape from the dungeon, take out Jaffar's guards, find your way through the Sultan's palace and then defeat Jaffar himself. You've only got sixty minutes to complete this mission and the clock is ticking, so you have very little time to waste hanging around and admiring the scenery [And you will because it's jaw-dropping awesome - Ed]. Your many tasks include avoiding deadly traps, solving rudimentary puzzles, jumping across platforms and engaging in dangerous sword fights. Although the player has an infinite amount of lives you have to restart at the beginning of a level each time you die, which can get a little frustrating.

The recreation of the games original intro sequence is absolutely stunning, in fact it almost looks as good as the one you'll find on 16-bit machines! This intro is accompanied by some excellent music, in fact it's probably the best I have ever heard on the Beeb. These high standards are carried over into the actual game too as most of the graphics here are excellent as are the sound effects too. BBC Prince of Persia also controls extremely well, well if you have a joystick anyway, and this is certainly a game that provides a lot of depth.

There are a few minor niggles here that detract somewhat but none of them are game breaking and certainly shouldn't put you off picking this up. Firstly there are the keyboard controls, which are a bit fiddly and will lead to some unfair deaths. Secondly I did find some of the colour choices on the sprites a bit strange, it's almost as if they tried to use as much colour as possible when it might have been better to keep things more simple.

All in all, this has to be the most accomplished homebrew I have ever seen for the BBC Micro. It puts most commercial games to shame and really shows just what is possible when this computer is put into the right hands. The developers deserve nothing but praise for this and I really can't wait to see what title they decide to work on next!