Jordan Mechner was born on June 4, 1964. He is an American video game designer, graphic novelist, author, screenwriter, filmmaker, and former video game programmer. He is known for helping create video games that look like movies and for using animation techniques in games. Mechner started his career while studying at Yale University by designing and programming the popular 1984 martial arts game Karateka for the Apple II computer. Five years later, he created the platform game Prince of Persia, which became widely available on many systems and was very successful. Both games used a technique called rotoscoping, where actors were filmed, and their movements were drawn over to create animation for the games. Prince of Persia inspired a long series of games and a 2010 movie made by Walt Disney Pictures.

Mechner has received many awards, including the 2017 GDC Pioneer Award. His work is often listed among the most important and influential games in the industry.

In 1993, Mechner started a company called Smoking Car Productions to create the adventure game The Last Express. The game was not profitable when it was first released but has since gained a loyal fan base and is recognized for its creative storytelling.

As an author, Mechner has written graphic novels with different artists, including Templar (2013), Monte Cristo (2022), and Liberty (2023). In 2023, he wrote and illustrated an autobiographical graphic novel called Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family, which won the 2023 Chateau de Cheverny prize for historical graphic novels.

In 2009, Mechner was named one of the top 100 game creators of all time by IGN.

Early life

Mechner was born in New York City in 1964. His parents were European Jewish immigrants. His father, Francis Mechner, was a psychologist, and his mother was a programmer. He studied at Yale University during the 1980s.

Career

While at Yale, Mechner created several Apple II games and tried to publish them, but they were not accepted. One game, Asteroid Blaster, a copy of the game Asteroids, was sent to Hayden Software. Another game, Deathbounce, an abstract action game, was sent to Broderbund. Mechner then spent two years at Yale working on his first published game, Karateka (1984), which reached number one on the Billboard software chart. Karateka is a side-scrolling game where fighting an enemy causes a long battle. The game switches between gameplay and scenes showing events not directly seen by the player, such as the imprisoned princess and her captor. The animation was made by drawing over frames of Mechner’s karate instructor recorded on film.

His second game, Prince of Persia, was released in 1989 after more than three years of work. He created both games using the 6502 assembly language for the Apple II, though this system was becoming less popular by the late 1980s, and few new games were made for it by 1989. At first, Prince of Persia sold poorly, but sales grew after it was adapted for other systems. Eventually, the game was released on about thirty computer and console platforms.

After finishing Prince of Persia, Mechner attended film school, traveled to Cuba to make and direct a short documentary film, and lived in Paris for a year. During this time, he designed and directed the sequel, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, released in 1993.

In 1993, Mechner founded the independent developer Smoking Car Productions, where he led the creation of the CD-ROM adventure game The Last Express. Smoking Car grew to sixty people, a large team for the mid-1990s, and the game took longer than expected to complete. When released in 1997, it received positive reviews but did not cover its production costs. The Last Express was re-released in 2012 by the French publisher DotEmu for mobile and other platforms.

In 2017, Mechner won the Honorific Award at the Fun & Serious Game Festival.

In 2001, Mechner worked with Ubisoft to restart Prince of Persia. Developed at Ubisoft Montreal with Mechner as a 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, including the Assassin’s Creed franchise, which was first planned as a sequel to Sands of Time. In 2024, Ubisoft released Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a new version of the franchise, developed at its Montpellier studio.

A film version of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was released on May 28, 2010. Mechner wrote the first version of the screenplay and also served as an executive producer.

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 shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination, and was first shown on PBS Independent Lens in 2005.

Mechner worked with a team on the 2008 Prince of Persia graphic novel. His graphic novel Templar was published in July 2013. Templar became a New York Times bestseller and was nominated for an Eisner Award. Mechner also wrote the graphic novel Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm, which was released to coincide with the film in 2010.

He has published two books about his game development experiences from the 1980s. One describes the making of Karateka, and the other focuses on Prince of Persia.

Mechner wrote a screenplay for a film adaptation of Michael Turner’s Fathom for Fox Studios.

In 2017, Mechner moved to Montpellier, France. He has worked with European illustrators on graphic novels, including Monte Cristo (2023) and Liberty (2022). In 2023, he released an autobiographical graphic novel, Replay: Mémoires d’une famille. He continues to write new graphic novels.

Works

• Book: Waiting for Dark (1993)
• Book: Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story (2003)
• Screenwriter for the movie Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)