Once the game had finally achieved the success it deserved Mechner was understandably feeling burned out: “I’d gone pretty much straight from college into the industrial park and I was desperate to travel. I moved to Paris. I designed Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow And The Flame in such a way that the artists and programmers could do it without me. This was in 1992. I didn’t write a line of code; I built the levels in Paris using the level editor, and FedExed them to San Francisco on 5.25-inch floppy discs.”

The sequel actually outsold the original on computer formats, but as Mechner himself admits it broke little new ground. Despite their essential contribution to the overall success of the original, there were no console versions of part two, leaving many today to assume that Ubisoft’s 2003 The Sands Of Time was the first real sequel. (The fewer who are aware of the Mechner-less Prince Of Persia 3D, released in 1999, the better.)

Despite the change of publisher, Mechner was deeply involved in The Sands Of Time. “That was a labour of love for me and the Ubisoft Montreal team,” he admits. “From start to finish we had the feeling that we were creating something special and also that we were underdogs, attempting something very ambitious in an industry and climate that wouldn’t necessarily embrace it.”

After completing The Sands Of Time, Mechner went to Hollywood and began work on a movie adaption, with a Disney-financed and Jerry-Bruckheimer-produced film now due out in summer 2010. As such, he has had little hands-on involvement with any of the subsequent Ubisoft sequels, although he has been following the development of the latest revamp particularly closely.

“They’ve set out to recapture the fantasy and romantic Arabian Nights feeling of The Sands Of Time, which I felt the last two games that were its direct sequels got away from,” says Mechner.

Irrespective of Ubisoft’s new goals, the original game may endure long after the complex 3D graphics of its successors become antiquated. “After all these years,” concludes Mechner, “I’d have to say that in terms of sheer playability – fluid animation and consistency of controls, so that you feel the joystick and your character are one – the Apple II version is still supreme.”