Jordan Mechner

Jordan Mechner (born June 4, 1964) is an American video game designer and former video game programmer who has also worked on writing and filmmaking projects. He began his career designing and programming the 1984 cinematic martial arts game Karateka for the Apple II while a student at Yale University. He followed that with the cinematic platform game Prince of Persia five years later; it was widely ported and became a hit. Both games used rotoscoping, where actors shot on film by Mechner were drawn over to create in-game animation.
In 1993, Mechner founded Smoking Car Productions to develop The Last Express, which required a large team and suffered budget overruns. Unlike his previous games, it did not sell well. Prince of Persia was revived by Ubisoft as a multi-game franchise, beginning with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in 2003. Mechner wrote the initial drafts of the screenplay for the 2010 film of the same name, directed by Mike Newell.
Early life
Mechner was born in New York City in 1964, into a family of European Jewish immigrants. His father is psychologist Francis Mechner, and his mother was a programmer. He attended Yale University in the 1980s.
Career
While at Yale, Mechner wrote several Apple II games that he submitted for publication, but which were rejected. Asteroid Blaster, an Asteroids clone, was submitted to Hayden Software and abstract arcade game Deathbounce to Broderbund. Mechner then spent two years at Yale writing his first published game, Karateka (1984), which went to number one on the Billboard software chart.
His second game, Prince of Persia, was released in 1989 after more than three years of work. He wrote both games in the 6502 assembly language for the Apple II, though that system was in decline through the late 1980s, and little new software was released by 1989. Initially, Prince of Persia sold poorly, but as it was ported to other systems, sales increased. Eventually, it was adapted for about thirty computer and console platforms.
Following the completion of Prince of Persia, Mechner took a break from the video game industry, during which he attended film school, wrote an unproduced screenplay, and traveled Europe for two years.
Mechner designed and directed the sequel, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, released in 1993.
He founded independent developer Smoking Car Productions in 1993, where he led the production of the CD-ROM adventure game The Last Express. Smoking Car grew to sixty people, a huge team for the mid-1990s, and the game took longer to finish than anticipated. When finally released in 1997, it was positively reviewed but sold poorly. The Last Express was re-released in 2012 by French publisher DotEmu for mobile and other platforms.
In 2017, Mechner won the Honorific Award at the Fun & Serious Game Festival.
Prince of Persia revival
In 2001, Mechner worked with Ubisoft to reboot Prince of Persia. Developed at Ubisoft Montreal with Mechner as game designer, writer, and creative consultant, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was released in 2003. It received twelve nominations and eight awards at the Interactive Achievement Awards. Ubisoft has since published four more Prince of Persia sequels and several spinoffs.
Mechner became one of the few video game creators to adapt his own creation as a feature film, with Disney's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Mike Newell, and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, and Alfred Molina. The film was released on May 28, 2010. Mechner wrote the first drafts of the screenplay and acted as executive producer.
Writing and directing
In 2003, Mechner wrote and directed the documentary film Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story. It won the 2003 IDA award for Best Short Documentary, was for an Academy Award nomination, and received its broadcast premiere on PBS Independent Lens in 2005.
Mechner collaborated with a team on the 2008 Prince of Persia graphic novel. The author's graphic novel Templar was published in July 2013. Templar became a New York Times best-selling book and was nominated for an Eisner Award. Mechner also wrote the graphic novel Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm, to tie in with the release of the film in 2010.
Mechner has written a screenplay for a film adaptation of Michael Turner's Fathom for Fox Studios.
He has self-published two volumes of his game development journals from the 1980s, one describing the making of Karateka and the other focusing on Prince of Persia. He was able to recover the source code of the Prince of Persia game from recently found 23-year-old 3.5" Apple ProDOS floppy disks, and posted it online.
Works
Games
Bibliography
Filmography
Waiting for Dark (1993)
Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story (2003)
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) (screenwriter)
Personal life
Mechner married Whitney Hills in 2014. The couple divorced in 2017.
References
External links
Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story at PBS
1964 births
American video game designers
Jewish American writers
Jewish video game developers
Living people
Writers from New York City
Yale University alumni
Game Developers Conference Pioneer Award recipients
21st-century American Jews