Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner has donated a wealth of materials documenting the game's development to The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.
These records are documented in a
blog post from International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) director Jon-Paul C. Dyson in which he claims the museum will use Mechner's donation, "which include videos, business records, correspondence, artwork, games, and much more," to better understand how Mechner's work on
Prince of Persia affected the course of game development history.
Dyson takes pains to call out Mechner's adaptation of rotoscoping animation techniques for game development as a revolution for the medium. Mechner developed the technique while creating
Karateka and employed it again during the development of
Prince of Persia; that process is documented in the materials received by the museum, and you can see some of the footage he donated on the ICHEG
website.
The museum has been acquiring notable collections of historical game development materials for years, including
a collection from Strategic Simulations Inc. of the defunct developer's documents and source code, as well as
a large collection of Japanese video games donated by enthusiasts.
