A Night at the Arcade: Prince of Persia

You may remember my gushing excitement about this week's XBLA release. Side-scrolling platform games are a dying breed. The original Prince of Persia broke some new ground back in 1989, featuring some of the most fluid character animations ever seen and a unique take on 2D swordplay.

The updated Prince of Persia Classic is literally the same game you played 18 years ago but with a dazzling makeover to hide all the wrinkles. The full version of the game will set you back 800 points, which is uncharacteristic of a retro release on Arcade. Granted this is the best-looking, value-priced retro remake ever released, on any platform. We should all be so lucky to have such beauty lavished on all of our "moldy oldies".

But please don't take this as an unconditional recommendation of Prince of Persia Classic. Like the original, there is an unforgiving 1-hour time limit to complete the quest of rescuing the princess from the evil vizier. Assuming you die and restart a lot (which you will), total time for completion may only clock in at 2 hours. So despite the marvelous graphics and gameplay to be found in this title, there is the value proposition to consider before plunking down those expensive Microsoft points.

For myself, I plan on waiting until I get that masochistic craving for a challenging platform game before I unlock the full game. Hey, it's not going anywhere, so why the rush? But in all honesty, Rainbow Six: Vegas is taking over my life again and has threatened to make any other games its bitch.

Vegas, she is a jealous mistress.