January 2023

A Friend in Deed

In August 1989, I slipped a last-minute feature into Prince of Persia when the game was already in playtesting: a little white mouse sent by the princess to help the prince get unstuck in the dungeon. This month, I've created a tribute artwork to those faithful friends. I'm releasing it today in a signed, numbered limited collector's edition of 40. You can read my full post about it here.

French version: En août 1989, j'ai glissé une fonctionnalité de dernière minute dans Prince of Persia alors que le jeu était déjà en phase de test : une petite souris blanche envoyée par la princesse pour aider le prince à se sortir du donjon. Ce mois-ci, j'ai créé une œuvre d'hommage à ces fidèles amis. Je la publie aujourd'hui dans une édition collector limitée à 40 exemplaires, signée et numérotée. Vous pouvez lire mon article complet à ce sujet ici.

Last Express Floor Plans

Added to the Library page this month: Floor plans and timetables for the 1914 Orient Express -- precious references for the Smoking Car team as we set out to reconstruct that train for our 1997 adventure game The Last Express.

In her Newsweek article posted last month, my co-writer Tomi Pierce tells the story of how retired railway employees rescued those artifacts from oblivion, and passed them to us in the basement of Paris Gare de l'Est.

Released by the Vizier

In keeping with the theme of game-related art, the original Prince of Persia "red box" artwork by Robert Florczak was sold at auction a few days ago -- for $63,000.

Broderbund commissioned the painting in June 1989 (I checked my journal :) The artist gave it as a gift to his friend Kevin Nealon, a stand-up comic and SNL alumnus who was his model for the evil vizier Jaffar. Now he's parted with it. If anyone reading this knows who the winning bidder was, I'm curious. I'd have liked to see it end up at the Strong Museum of Play, where I donated my own Prince of Persia collection -- but, like the prince, I suspect this canvas has further adventures in store.

The auction inspired me to write up the back story of how this artwork was created, from my point of view as a game author at the time. You can read my article about it on Gamedeveloper.com.

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