They Create Worlds

https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/feed.xml

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Love of the worlds created by video game designers and personalities drives Alex Smith & Jeffrey Daum (history, law, CS degrees) to provide a scholarly yet light-hearted discussion of how arcade, home console, and PC games merged into a Video Game Industry. Emphasis is on the combination of business and creative elements needed for financial success. Interviews of Atari, EA, Activision, & other execs with detailed source evaluations produce the insights you hear in these 140+ hours!

Episodes

6 hours ago

Jordan Mechner and Price of Persia

6 hours ago

TCW Podcast Episode 237 - Jordan Mechner and Price of Persia

We continue our look at Jordan Mechner with the development of Prince of Persia. Its cinematic inspirations include Castles of Dr. Creep, the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the 1938 Robin Hood. To animate the prince, Mechner filmed his brother performing stunts, then manually painted key frames, painting his brother white and the background black to make the footage compatible with a limited digitizer. Memory constraints forced creative solutions, like XORing the prince and bit shifting him to create Shadow Man. A promising film project delayed the game’s release, but Prince of Persia launched on the Apple II with groundbreaking animation. A strong Macintosh port and renewed interest following Disney’s Aladdin helped turn the game into a hit across the early 1990s.

The Making of Prince of Persia: https://www.jordanmechner.com/en/books/journals/

TCW 172 - The Computer Price Wars Part 1: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-computer-price-wars-part-1/

TCW 173 - The Computer Price Wars Part 2: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-computer-wars-part-2/

TCW 174 - The Computer Price Wars Part 3: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-computer-wars-part-3/

TCW 019 - The Great Video Game Crash Part 1: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-great-video-game-crash-part-1/

TCW 020 - The Great Video Game Crash Part 2: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-great-video-game-crash-part-2/

TCW 021 - The Great Video Game Crash Part 3: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-great-video-game-crash-part-3/

TCW 071 - A Story of Brøderbund!: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/a-story-of%C2%A0br%C3%B8derbund/

TCW 072 - The MYSTeries of Brøderbund!: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-mysteries-of-br%C3%B8derbund/

The Castles of Dr. Creep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi2dvxcioBw

First 10 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUWYmTpYdP4

The Thief of Bagdad (1924): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTXZSVIIk-c