Jordan Mechner filmed his brother running and jumping in a parking lot with a VHS camcorder in the late 1980s, then traced those frames by hand into a computer. That rotoscoping technique gave the 1989 Prince of Persia a sense of weight and momentum no other game had, sent it to more than 20 platforms, and set off a 35-year saga that includes a $336 million Disney film, corporate buyouts, and the accidental birth of Assassin’s Creed.

This episode traces the whole arc: Mechner leaving for NYU film school, the 1999 Prince of Persia 3D disaster during the Broderbund and Mattel shuffles, Ubisoft’s Sands of Time reboot with its time-rewinding dagger, the corporate-mandated dark turn of Warrior Within, the Assassin project that outgrew its own franchise, the cancelled Redemption pitch and Sands of Time remake, and how The Lost Crown and The Rogue Prince of Persia found the series’ identity again by going back to 2D.

• How hand-traced VHS footage created the first motion-capture-style animation in a video game and changed player expectations
• Why the Sands of Time rewind mechanic was a technical fix for 3D platforming disguised as a story device
• How market research on teenage boys pushed Warrior Within toward a gritty tone Mechner rejected, and why it still sold
• The Animus, the novel Alamut, and how a bodyguard spinoff called Prince of Persia: Assassin became Assassin’s Creed
• The cultural footprint, from Tomb Raider’s movement and a Korean pop song to Victor Pelevin’s Prince of Gosplan