From Yale To Persia: Private Diaries Of Gaming’s Renaissance Man

In 1985 Jordon Mechner was a student at Yale riding high on a mix of euphoria over the surprise success of his first video game, Karateka, and trepidation over the idea of turning that success into a career.

Trading the east coast for the west landed him in the thick of a game industry beginning to realise the potential of the medium. Mechner’s journey from college student to Prince of Persia creator captures they birth of not just an influential video game, but of the industry. Fortunately, Mechner kept a diary. Below you will find a chapter from his eight-year chronicle of life as a developer and the birth of Prince of Persia reprinted with Mechner’s permission. Enjoy. – Ed’s Note

September 10, 1986

[San Francisco ] “I thought you were the pizza man,” Tomi said when she opened the door to the Baker Street apartment and saw me there at the top of the steep steps with my two bags.

Now I’m reclining in luxury in one of their new armchairs, listening to Maurizio Pollini play Chopin preludes on their new CD player. There’s a stunning view of San Francisco Bay out the windows that makes my stomach contract every time I look at it.

Did I mention that I’m scared? Getting a ride to work this morning with Tomi, pulling into the Broderbund parking lot — that was scary.

Now that the day’s over and it’s clear that I had nothing to be scared of, I’m not scared any more — I’m terrified. I’m scared shitless.

I have to rent a car. I have to drive it. On these insane twelve-lane racetracks they call freeways. I have to find an apartment and rent it. I have to move in. I have to buy a car. I have to buy insurance. I’ve never done any of this stuff before… and now I have to do it all at once.

And on top of this — or rather, at the bottom of it — I have to make a computer game.

It’s gonna be fun.

September 11, 1986

Visited Danny Gorlin. He’s sunk more money into developing the development system to end all development systems. Saw the final version of Airheart. It’s got some staggering special effects and it’s no fun at all to play.

Danny thinks spending a million bucks on a development system will give him an edge. He might be right. But the best Apple games have been developed on a plain Apple II with two disk drives. Lucasfilm spent a million bucks to make Rescue on Fractalus and Ball Blazer, and those games aren’t significantly better than, or different from, the competition. The real strides forward — Raster Blaster, Choplifter, (what the hell) Karateka — were the work of solo programmers with no special resources.

Maybe Danny is leading game design into the 21st century. Maybe he’s just flushing money down the toilet.