As we are used to, Xbox Live Arcade brings us a lot of the old time games, reworked. One of these games is Prince of Persia Classic, a remake after the original Prince of Persia from 1989 for Apple II, developed by Jordan Mechner. The game had a huge success and was then ported on almost every existing platform. It was about time Ubisoft and Gameloft to make a facelift for this great game and bring it to the next-gen consoles.

The plot of the game is the same as the original. The action is set in Ancient Persia with the Sultan being called to war some foreign country. With the sultan away, the evil Vizier Jaffar takes control of the throne. Jaffar imprisons the prince and asks the princess to marry him. When she refuses him, Jaffar gives her an hour to think on her final answer or die. Therefore, you play as the prince and you have an hour to save the princess from the evil Jaffar.

Prince of Persia Classic features 14 levels and 3 Single Player modes:
Normal: here is where you play the game in normal mode and if the time runs up you can still save the princess, you can also replay any level or cutscene.
Time Attack: you MUST save the princess within an hour or else the evil Jaffar marries her and takes control of all Persia.
Survival: this mode is for the hardcore gamers – you must finish the game within one hour and with only one life.

If you played Prince of Persia back in '89, you will surely recognize all of the levels in Prince of Persia Classic. As you start the game, every move you make can be your last one. Nope, just kidding, you can always restart and start over. The levels have a maze design, so that you must push some trap somewhere to open a door elsewhere. There are booby-traps spread all along the level, hidden spikes, saw-mouths, and falling floors to make you loose precious time in your quest.

To balance your frenzied run to save the princess, there are achievements for different tasks completed like picking up a sword, pushing an enemy into spikes, playing half of the level upside-down and more of this kind.

All of the old game aspects have been beautifully reproduced into this new version, some of them enhanced. Like the combat system. Pressing A button will parry while with X button you will swing your sword. When you parry, you enter in slow-motion mode, this won't help you in any way but it does give a cool look of the combat. When your sword clinches with the guard's sword you will have to rapidly push a button to get a 1 hit advantage; also finishing moves have been added to the fight. If you plan to get into combat and swing your sword up and down, it will surely get you with lying on the floor. So, you'll have to parry a lot and hit the opponent when you see an opening if you want to win a fight. The game developers fixed a lot of exploits that the old Prince of Persia had, like running into spikes or tricking the dungeon guards to avoid the combat by jumping over them.

When Ubisoft bought Prince of Persia rights and developed the trilogy, it was just a matter of time that the original Prince of Persia was taken into view and received an “upgrade”. Gameloft did a wonderful job and fans of Prince of Persia can enjoy the new, ultra, super uber cool Prince of Persia reloaded – ummm Classic.

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