Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Developed by: Ubisoft Montreal
Published by: Ubisoft
Released: November 10, 2003
We've praised multiple games on our list as being revolutionary for updating a classic for a new format, but all of them pale in comparison to what Ubisoft Montreal did with the Prince of Persia franchise. Leave it to the French to infuse Parkour into Jordan Mechner's original idea of a princess trapped in a castle. Oh, the idea was shifted around, that's for sure, but the core idea was the same.
Luckily, all that meant was a time-bending trek through a myriad of Persian castle locales. The idea of beings (and indeed animals) infused with the Sands of Time gave the game a base to jump off of... or cartwheel... or pirouette... or to vault over and slash down the back of a creature created by the Sands escaping from an eternal Hourglass. It made for a unique kind of experimental platforming experience; if you messed up, you simply rewound time and tried it again differently. It removed the penalty of experimentation and though the series started to fall back a bit too much on that core ideal, the third game returned things to the original.
Even with all the additions and storyline advancements the franchise made, the fact that it all wrapped back around to the original just shows how powerful and important that first game was in giving the Prince a whole new set of moves to escape from his captors.
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