Retro Gaming Australia

The recently found “missing” original Apple II source code for Prince of Persia (1989) has been released on GitHub and is freely available for download.

Jordan Mechner, the game’s creator, reacquired the lost source code when his father shipped him a carton of old games which he had found in a closet whilst spring cleaning.

Mechner, along with the assistance and expertise of digital archivist Jason Scott and Apple II collector Tony Diaz, extracted the source code from 22-year-old 3.5″ floppy disk archive successfully and you can read about the preservation effort here.

Prince of Persia creator, Jordan Mechner, has finally found his long lost original Apple II source code for Prince of Persia (1989).

Mechner’s dad had been doing a spot of spring cleaning, and happened upon a box of old games in the back of a closet which he shipped to his son. Upon opening the carton, Mechner was surprised to find the missing source code in amongst a bunch of Spanish Drosoft versions of Prince of Persia and Karateka.

On his website, an excited Mechner wrote “The carton arrived yesterday. My jaw dropped when I saw what was inside.”

Locating the lost source code brings Mechner’s ten year search to an end. He intends to convert the disks content into a more modern and useable version of the game, which he plans to share online.