Prince of Persia Apple II source code released

Lost, but not forgotten, for 20 years, the source code for the very first Prince of Persia on the Apple II was released today by creator Jordan Mechner. The code was unknowingly discovered by his father on 3.5" floppy disks in a box at the back of a closet, and salvaged with the help of a huge amount of vintage hardware.

Mechner was jubilant when a box of old games arrived in March from his dad, who also composed PoP's music, with the source code disks apparently amongst them. "I've been searching for [it], off and on, for the past ten years, pestering everyone from Doug Carlston to Danny Gorlin and everyone who ever worked at Broderbund, and finally gave up hope of ever finding [it]," he said.

Decades-old disks can be volatile, though, so Mechner drafted expert help with specialised hardware to save them. It all went swimmingly, but you can follow it historically through the #popsource hashtag on Twitter.

Should you fancy tinkering with the source, you can download it now from github.

The recovery setup

[Images from Jordan Mechner on Twitter.]