A conversation with Jordan Mechner, creator of Prince of Persia and The Last Express

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Interviews by Adventure Game Hotspot
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In the broader gaming world, Jordan Mechner is best known as the creator of the enormously popular Prince of Persia series, but to adventure fans his legacy stems more from the critically acclaimed real-time mystery on rails, The Last Express. And yet as successful as he's been as a game designer, there's much more to Jordan than that, as he's also an accomplished screenwriter and graphic novelist. Indeed, his latest work has just been published in English: the graphic novel Replay, which recounts the multigenerational tale of his own family history spanning three different timelines, dating back to his grandfather's separation from his parents as they fled Austria in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution.

Jordan's fascinating four-decade career was ripe for an in-depth interview with Daniel Albu, resulting in a wide-ranging video chat. Their conversation goes back to Jordan's early days as a comic artist discovering the joys and possibilities of computer game programming, and goes on to include all kinds of topics across two-plus hours, including how to pronouce Jordan's breakthrough martial arts action game Karateka (spoiler alert: NOT like "karate"!), who modeled moves for him on the roof of his family car for use in rotoscope animation, how a trip to Cyan's offices for a look at Myst helped influence The Last Express's visual design, and how much of Jordan's original first draft screenplay survived in the Prince of Persia movie. And whatever became of the 3D Last Express movie he co-wrote with director Paul Verhoeven, anyway? Answers to all these and much more await, so sit back, click play and enjoy.

Tech Talk with Daniel Albu is part of the Adventure Game Hotspot Network, a collective of talented, dedicated content producers who work entirely independently but have joined forces to promote each other’s efforts. All opinons expressed belong solely to the original creators.