Another fantastic conversion of Prince of Persia – this one for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. It was a CD-ROM only release, so took advantage of Red Book audio streamed directly from the disc, and as a result: the music in the game is quite amazing and really adds to the atmosphere of the game.

Gameplay, too, is precise and perfectly-timed – there are no problems with falling off platforms inadvertently in this version, like there are with others. Skeleton fights are more challenging, because you really have to parry their blows and time your counters to beat them. There are a lot of extra, hidden rooms that are only available in this version, including some devious traps (fall into a pit with a skeleton in it and you ain’t coming back). There’s also an excellent demo; multiple save slots; saved best times; even the option to speed up or slow down movement or battle.

If I had one gripe: the backgrounds do lack colour. At least for the first part of the game.

Otherwise: this and the SNES version are arguably the best versions of Prince of Persia out there.

Note: two different versions of this game were released. One by Riverhillsoft for Japan, which has Japanese language text, and another for the North American Turbogrfx-16 market, which is in English. The game was developed in Japan by Riverhillsoft, who also made the Sega CD, X68000 and FM Towns versions (which are similar to this, but not quite as good). These grabs are from the North American Turbografx-16 version.

More: Prince of Persia on Wikipedia