Prince of Persia 2 is one of the most challenging games ever made. Maybe this is because of the terribly imprecise control, the nonsensical puzzles, and the character's amazing inability to survive falling any distance. There are no pits with spikes this time around, apparently there were enough complaints about the ones in the original Prince of Persia, but unfortunately, non-spiky pits are just as deadly as spiky ones, and the new traps are far more sinister.
Anyway, this is a run of Prince of Persia 2 for SNES, played as it was definitely not intended to be played. I abuse the quirkiness of the hit detection as much as I can, and manipulate enemies to not attack me like they normally do when you try going past them. I skip getting the sword, both times, and also manage to not lose the one that I'm supposed to drop. Partway through the run, I'm granted some rather incredible new abilities through what is apparently a huge bug in the game. I won't spoil what this bug is exactly, but you'll definitely know it when you see it. It saves a whole bunch of minutes. The many differences from the PC version of the game save a good amount of time, too.
Also, I die 3 times:
- In a fall onto the magic carpet at the end of a level, which apparently resurrects me (the "sit" command still works works when you're dead).
- After performing a certain show-stopping glitch, I fall out of the level to reset to the start door, to save time.
- Just before the end of the game, required in order to steal the flame.
If you notice me doing any seemingly unnecessary extra movements, it's because a lot of things require precise positioning, and normal movement is very imprecise, so sometimes I have to do things like ducking to move forward just the right amount or slide-ducking to stop at the exact right location.
(The hardest part of making this movie, and the main reason the re-record count is as high as it is, is that one of the glitches I tried to abuse decided to abuse me back later. Specifically, on the bridge that falls that you're supposed to catch onto and drop your sword at, I found you can sheathe the sword and run to save time, but because I exited the screen before the bridge had fallen, it corrupted some memory in the game, causing a series of platforms 2 levels later to be impossible to catch onto. After a few thousand tries to climb down one ledge in all sorts of different ways, I realized it had to be glitched somehow and eventually tracked it back to the bridge incident, which I redid to be slow enough to not cause the glitch. I also had desync problems until I realized that this game requires the "fake mute" fix just like Out of this World (this causes the music in level 1 to play in slow-motion - oh well).)
This run:
- Aims for fastest time
- Abuses programming errors (a LOT)
- Takes damage to save time
- Uses death as a shortcut
Emulator used is the v4 available at:
Forum/Topics/1816
(If you view it with that version you won't have to worry about this, but the options set are: WIP1 timing ON, Left+Right OFF, Volume Envelope Reading OFF, Fake Mute workaround ON, Sync samples with sound CPU ON.)