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By Brad Cook

“We all make mistakes; some are small and some are large. But his mistake, borne of innocence, fueled by pride, was the greatest and most terrible of them all.” Kaileena, Empress of Time, tells us this as we watch her and the Prince of Persia approach his home city of Babylon. The Prince thought his problems had ended after he defeated the Dahaka, the Keeper of the Timeline that pursued him relentlessly after he unwittingly unleashed the Sands of Time, but a volley of flaming arrows says otherwise: instead of a hero’s welcome, the Prince discovers a scene of devastation.

The merciless attack sinks his ship. The Prince makes his way ashore and watches as soldiers of a mysterious army take away an unconscious Kaileena. Relying on nothing more than his acrobatic skills and ability to move with stealth, the Prince sets out to discover what happened to Babylon and rescue Kaileena.

Two Sides of the Prince

The Two Thrones concludes the storyline begun in The Sands of Time and Warrior Within. (See “A Tale of Many Princes” to learn more.) The Prince soon learns that the temporal changes he made during the previous two games only caused more problems in the present, and now he must restore the Sands of Time. Little does he realize that by doing so, he will commit Kaileena to her ultimate fate, a destiny she tried to avoid in the story’s earlier installments. Along the way, he will be reunited with his love, Farah, who he met in the first game.

This time, however, the Sands’ corrupting influence give rise to the Dark Prince, an alter ego who tries to possess the Prince’s body during the course of the game. The Sands also grant both versions of the Prince special powers:

Recall: Rewinds the timeline up to eight seconds to avoid committing a mistake or falling victim to a fatal blow during a battle.
Eye of the Storm: Slows down time in the surrounding environment while it continues at the same rate for him, allowing him to render enemies helpless or avoid traps.
Winds of Sand: Unleashes an attack that simultaneously harms all nearby enemies.
Sand Storm: An even more powerful version of Winds of Sand.

Both Princes can also run along walls and rebound off them, climb columns and leap to other spots, straddle two close walls and climb up or down, balance on beams, and more. Thanks to his chained Daggertail weapon, the Dark Prince can pull off additional actions, including swinging on poles and interacting with special wall rings that pull out blocks.

The Prince, however, differs from his selfish alter ego in his ability to carry two weapons at once, including his powerful Dagger of Time. That allows him to perform special fighting moves, although the Dark Prince has unique attacks of his own; both characters share a variety of free-form strikes that you can string together. For example, you can run along a wall and drop onto an enemy or spin kick off a wall or column and deliver a devastating blow. And if you sneak up on opponents while in either guise, you can dispatch all of them with a single slice by activating a Speed Kill.

One Destiny

You’ll learn more about all of those powers as you progress through the game. The Prince’s abilities come in handy as he explores Babylon and makes his way through the palace where he once lived; he’ll need them to activate levers, slide blocks out of walls, and perform other actions. Sometimes you’ll find yourself faced with nothing but an empty room, and you must solve the puzzle that opens a hidden door.

Finding Kaileena, however, simply puts in motion new events that move the story forward. By the end, you’ll need to figure out how to shed the Dark Prince persona, help Kaileena accept her ultimate destiny, and rescue Farah from a grim fate.

Just remember these words, spoken at the beginning of Sands of Time: “Most people think time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction. But I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm. You may wonder who I am, or why I say this. Sit down, and I will tell you a tale like none that you have ever heard.”

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This is Not My Beautiful House. The Prince, after being infected by the Sands of Time, surveys his ruined home city of Babylon.

Give Him Time to Work It Out. The Prince suspends himself between two walls, waiting for the right moment to strike.

You May Find Yourself in Another Part of the World. The Prince and Kaileena return to a Babylon under siege.

Player fighting an emeny in a burning palace.

Don’t Let the Sands Hold Him Down. The Dark Prince executes a vicious Speed Kill.

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System Requirements:

Mac OS X version 10.4.11 or 10.5.5
Intel Core Duo processor
1GB of RAM
ATI X1600, Nvidia 7300 GT, or Intel X3100 or better graphics chipset (Intel GMA950 chipset not supported)
1.6GB hard disk space

A Tale of Many Princes

Jordan Mechner developed the original Prince of Persia game and Brøderbund Software published it for the Apple II and various consoles in 1989. It was unique in that it gave you an infinite number of lives but required you, a commoner, to rescue the Sultan’s daughter from the Grand Vizier Jaffar within an hour. The game was also noteworthy for its fluid animation, which Mechner created by studying film of his brother running and jumping.

In 1994, Mechner followed it up with a sequel, The Shadow and the Flame, which Brøderbund published for Mac, PC, and Super Nintendo. Jaffar has returned, aided by a witch whose magic makes the Sultan’s daughter think he is the Prince and the Prince is nothing more than a beggar. After the guards drive him out of the palace, the Prince must figure out how to return and defeat the Vizier. Once again you have unlimited lives, but this time you have two hours to complete the game.

The original game ended its run with 1999’s Prince of Persia 3D, in which you learn that the Sultan long ago promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to her cousin, Rugnor. The prince is thrown into the dungeons below the palace of Assan, Rugnor’s father, and he must escape and rescue his wife. The game does away with the real-time challenge, except during the final level, when you have just 150 seconds to save the princess.

A New Prince

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time relaunched the series in 2003, this time with a Prince who is the son of King Shahraman, ruler of the fictional kingdom of Azad. Mechner, who had stepped away from the character after The Shadow and the Flame, returned to write and design the game. The story begins with a corrupt Vizier who convinces Shahraman to attack India, during which the Prince finds the Dagger of Time and the Hourglass of Time. He returns to Azad with those prizes and Farah, daughter of the Maharajah of India.

After the Vizier tricks the Prince into using the Dagger of Time to open the Hourglass and unleash the Sands of Time, infecting Azad in the process, the Prince and Farah set out to correct the mistake. The ultimate solution, however, involves rewinding time and undoing the invasion of India, which means Farah has no idea who the Prince is, despite the fact that the two had started to fall in love.

In Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, we learn that the Prince is being pursued by the Dahaka, which seeks to kill him and fix the anomaly created in the timeline by the events of the first game. Following the advice of an oracle, the Prince travels to the Island of Time, where he hopes to prevent the Sands of Time from being created and thus eliminate the Dahaka from existence. There, he meets Kaileena and eventually learns that she is really the Empress of Time. He kills her to stop the Dahaka, but the Empress embodies the Sands of Time, so that act simply unleashes the Sands once more.

The Prince then discovers the Mask of the Wraith, which allows him to be in two places in time at once. While wearing the mask, he travels back in time and allows the Dahaka to kill his other self. Then, instead of killing Kaileena, he brings her to the present, so that the Sands won’t be created, but the Dahaka merely turns its attention to her, because another time anomaly has been created. The Prince finally defeats the Dahaka and he and Kaileena set sail for his home city of Babylon, where the events of The Two Thrones begin.

Many Princes

While there was some talk of making the new games prequels to the old ones, in the end, as Ubisoft producer Ben Mattes explains, “we never felt it was the Prince of Persia, it’s a Prince of Persia. There are many Princes of Persia within this fantasy universe that we call Prince of Persia.” To that end, the latest Prince of Persia game stars a new prince, one who Mattes says “is not a guy who’s going to save the world because it’s his duty to do so — this is a guy who’s an adventurer, he’s a wanderer.”

Yet another version of the Prince appears in the “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” film, for which Mechner served as one of the screenwriters. He also consulted on “The Prince of Persia: The Graphic Novel,” where more Princes appear. A.B. Sina wrote the book, and in the afterword, Mechner writes: “Which one is the true Prince of Persia? All of them. And none of them.”

In a sense, all of these videogame, movie, and comic book stories form an updated retelling of ”1,001 Arabian Nights,” which was one of Mechner’s original inspirations. Thus the story of the Prince, who is one out of many, comes full circle, just as it does in the trilogy concluded by The Two Thrones.