With Valentine's Day putting us all in a romantic mood it was our duty to gather some of the defining aaaawww moments video games offer.

A great deal of game endings below so watch out for heavy spoilers!

The Ending Of The First Prince Of Persia

source: Prince Of Persia Final Level

Nate And Elena In Uncharted 3

source: MiyuDevaughn's LP

Holding Hands In ICO

source: The Bridge Scene In ICO

The Ballroom Dance And Fireworks Scene in Final Fantasy VIII

source: MasterLL's LP

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts Ending

source: Thetwodud's LP

Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link's Ending

source: LaiSteve66's LP

Yuna And Tidus' First Kiss In Final Fantasy X

source: Final Fantasy Union

Aladdin's Ending

source: ka6Scope's LP

Katherine's True Ending In Catherine

source: theRadBrad's LP

The Ending Of The Secret Of Monkey Island

source: Monkey Island Wiki

The Ending Of Revenge Of Shinobi

source: jay4gamers1's LP

Mario Saves Princess Peach In The Enhanced Version Of Super Mario Bros. In Super Mario All-Stars

source: Artificialraven's LP, header pic is Limeknight's My Greatest Hero fan art on Deviantart

These are not the only lucky video game characters, so submit your picks with visuals in the comments below.

Bizarrely, within the same 24-hour period that Ubisoft says the Prince of Persia series is "paused", footage has emerged of a project that sure seems like a Prince of Persia reboot.

You've seen it before, back in August, but this production video says that the project's name is Osiris, adding to suspicions the game—whatever it is—is set in Egypt.

While most of the clip involves background footage showing actors used for motion-capture data, there are snippets of art and other scenes shown, especially towards the end.

The video was posted by Mark Kilian, and it was uploaded five months ago. It says it was commissioned by Ubisoft Montreal, the same mega-studio behind the Assassin's Creed series (and Far Cry 3).

You can watch it here.

UPDATE - Seems the project is "no longer moving forward". Bummer.

Osiris [Mark Kilian, via GitarooMan @ NeoGAF]

No topic appeared in the rumor mill this year as much as the coming next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

At the beginning of January, British trade magazine MCV reported that the next Xbox and PlayStation would both debut at E3 2012. This did not actually end up happening, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was not slated to happen at one point. At E3, we did see next-gen tech demos for Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and Square Enix's Luminous Studio, as well as two major reveals sans any mention of specific platforms—Star Wars 1313 and Watch Dogs.

Microsoft's Next Xbox, Codenamed Durango

Two weeks later, IGN posted a rumor that pegged the next Xbox as being slated for a fall 2013 release and sporting a Radeon HD 6670-based GPU with graphics processing abilities six times that of the 360.

The very next day after the IGN story, Kotaku's own Stephen Totilo reported that industry sources told him the next Xbox will see a format upgrade to high-capacity Blu-Ray discs that work in tandem with some sort of anti-used game mechanism, and that a new, more accurate version of Kinect will ship with the console. Sources indicated IGN's estimate of a machine six times more powerful than the 360 was in line with Microsoft's intentions, but also cautioned that dev kits had yet to go out so any discussion of system specs was purely hypothetical. (Also of note: in early March, MCV's sources said Microsoft had moved away from Blu-Ray plans to some sort of disc-less console.)

A few weeks after that, sources told Kotaku that the next Xbox carried the codename of "Durango," which was seemingly confirmed by a late February tweet from a Crytek technical designer. This is possibly my favorite rumor of the year, if only for the reason that it taught me how fun it is to type the word "Durango."

In mid-May, a recruitment firm's postings appearing to divulge details of some of Microsoft's internally developed Durango titles were discovered. One posting, for a nameless South East England studio that was almost certainly Lionhead, described their next title as an "new IP" RPG that fuses single-player and multiplayer to create an nonlinear MMO-like experience wherein both manners of play influence a dynamic narrative. Another hinted that a Midlands studio that was almost certainly Rare is planning on exploring new action or shooter IPs in addition to continued Kinect Sports releases.

Much to Microsoft's chagrin, what might have been a two-year-old internal roadmap document for Xbox leaked roughly a week after E3's close. In addition to a holiday 2013 launch date for both the console and next version of Kinect, the document touted SmartGlass-esque capabilities, eventual cloud content accessibility, and most curiously, a set of virtual reality glasses codenamed "Fortaleza."

Sony's Next PlayStation, Codenamed Orbis

In mid-February, SCEA head Jack Tretton put a kibosh on any speculation of a 2012 PlayStation 4 reveal, explaining that it would be a distraction to his own business operations for the year.

On this PlayStation 4, in late February sources said that Sony would be abandoning the much-vaunted Cell processor, and opt for a AMD-developed graphics chip in the system.

About a month later, Kotaku heard the next PlayStation is slated for a holiday 2013 release and is codenamed "Orbis," which was a subdomain on Sony's developer site until slightly after the story was published. Sources also divulged that the system currently had a AMD Southern Islands GPU and a AMD x64 CPU, will not feature PS3 backwards compatibility, and will employ an anti-used games mechanism like that of the next Xbox. Portfolio sketches from a design firm that apparently worked with Sony on Orbis seemingly hinted at Kinect-y and Smartglass-y functionality.

IGN reported in early April that the Orbis' custom could be based on AMD's A8-3850 APU and Radeon HD 7670 GPU, suggesting performance parity between the Durango and Orbis if one is to believe previous rumors.

A few days prior to E3, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sony briefly considered abandoning any sort of physical media for the next PlayStation before ultimately passing on the idea. However, the company's acquisition of cloud gaming firm Gakai in July is certainly an overture to this ambition. (Sony's keenness for Gakai was, of course, a rumor circulating in late May.)

While neither Sony nor Microsoft have announced their next consoles, rumors of several cancelled first-party projects in development for those systems circulated in 2012. The studios closed by Sony this year-Zipper and Studio Liverpool-were apparently working on three now-canceled titles for the next PlayStation: a stealth game and new Wipeout from Liverpool, and a shooter from Zipper. In March, Microsoft apparently cancelled a next-generation title from Obsidian Entertainment codenamed Project North Carolina, which Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart vaguely described as an original open-world title in a recent interview with Kotaku.

Unless something changes in the very near future, Orbis and Durango will be on store shelves this time next year. It seems like a plausible conjecture to think a reveal might occur at special events in advance of E3 so that Microsoft and Sony could dominate their own tech news cycles with their announcements, rather than becoming another element in a media circus. Spring perhaps?

Prey 2

Hours after Bethesda announced Prey 2's delay in 2012, Shacknews posted a report with sources claiming that developer Human Head intentionally stopped work on the game in November 2011 as they were unhappy with the terms of their contract with Bethesda and hoped to use the work stoppage as leverage to get a better contract. (In light of this story, the cancellation of Human Head's Prey 2 talks at GDC suddenly made a lot more sense.)

That tactic did not work, and the game is very much still in limbo. And at this point, it appears extremely unlikely that Prey 2 will ever see release. However, Human Head did recently put up some job postings asking for candidates with experience with open-world games and "crafting stories in the mystery genre," suggesting something else is afoot at the studio.

XCOM—As Developed By Irrational?

In late September, a reader who took a marketing survey tipped Kotaku on 2K Marin's controversial XCOM shooter reboot, which has virtually disappeared following the announcement of Firaxis' turn-based XCOM: Enemy Unknown earlier this year. Screenshots and details sent by the reader suggested that the game had shifted from an FPS to a third-person squad-based tactical shooter a la SOCOM. Interestingly, survey takers were asked about their feelings on XCOM being sold as a $30 downloadable game rather than a traditional $60 retail title, perhaps showing that 2K wanted to minimize their losses from the long-in-development title like Ubisoft's approach with I Am Alive.

XCOM has been in development in some permutation since 2006, and word of an Irrational-developed revival (at the time, 2K Australia was still Irrational Games Australia) first leaked in February 2007—a full three years before the game was even announced. The Irrational studio in Boston was involved in the project around that time, and assets in a former Irrational Boston artist's portfolio of "a highly stylized early prototype" for XCOM hint that this early version of the game was stylistically cartoonish and seemingly steampunk-influenced. (It is unknown if Ken Levine ever worked on XCOM directly, but he did say in a recent interview that "[he and his team] played around with something else for a couple of months" after Irrational finished the first BioShock.)

In May, 2K had pushed back XCOM's release to the company's fiscal year 2014 (sometime between April 2013 and March 2014), indicating that there are still some development issues with the game. The head of 2K Australia—who were then the primary developer of the game—departed in January 2011, and 2K Australia stopped working on XCOM late last year to support Irrational in the development of BioShock Infinite. Additionally, narrative director Jordan Thomas has been working in Boston on BioShock Infinite for most of 2012.

Plants vs. Zombies—A Shooter?

One of the stranger rumors of the year was an item Kotaku heard in the summer about a Plants vs. Zombies shooter in development at a new PopCap Burnaby team consisting of former EA Black Box employees. This new PopCap team is said to be working on a PvZ console game akin to Team Fortress 2. At the time the story broke, the game was still a few weeks away from an official PopCap greenlight.

But that greenlight appears to have been granted. In early November, a job posting for the team popped up on EA's jobs portal in relation to a "AAA console title" that seemingly utilizes Frostbite 2, and a multiplayer designer opening appeared in mid-October.

Rocksteady's Next Game

Around the time of Comic-Con, famed Hollywood trade Variety reported that the Rocksteady's next game will be a Silver Age-inspired prequel to the previous two Arkham titles dealing with the Caped Crusader's first encounter with the Joker. The game also apparently features Batman teaming up with other DC superheroes, and the earliest possible release date is sometime in 2014.

Variety says the title is the "the next installment in Rocksteady Studios' gritty videogame series," hinting that the Silver Age inspiration will be narrative, not stylistic. Personally, I think is a shame because a blend of the bright iconography of Silver Age comics (the onomatopoeic bubbles particularly) and Rocksteady's refined combat system would be utterly sublime. I found Arkham City's grit to just be exhausting after a certain point, and I would totally welcome a solid, LEGO-less DC game based around something lighter.

Unannounced Games From EA

Early in February, French gaming site Hardgamers discovered what appeared to be a publicly accessible wiki for EA Partners' fiscal year 2013 marketing plans apparently authored by EA's Director of Marketing, Phil Marineau. The document discussed a number of titles, including some that were unannounced including Respawn's yet-to-be-seen game, a possible new Populous, and Insomniac's social game Outernauts.

Two of those aforementioned games obviously remain unannounced, and one could have very well been cancelled. We haven't seen anything else even suggesting that a new Populous is in development, and it would not be terribly surprising if the lackluster market performance of Starbreeze's Syndicate cooled EA's interest in externally developed Bullfrog revivals. Plus, the natural, logical extension for a Populous title in today's marketplace would likely be a freemium iOS or Facebook game—things that do not tend to have a long development cycle.

We also haven't seen anything of Respawn's debut title, aside from a cryptic blurry image or two last year. The most significant detail that we have about the game is an E3 2011 interview wherein EA's Frank Gibeau describes Respawn's game as a "sci-fi oriented shooter" designed to compete with Gears or Halo. Respawn's appearance on this wiki would suggest that, at one point, EA thought they would be kicking off the marketing campaign for Respawn's game during their 2013 fiscal year. (There are still three months to go in EA's fiscal year, but such a large announcement so early in the year seems unlikely.)

Shifts In The Rainbow 6: Patriot's Development Team

In early March, Ubisoft apparently removed the creative director, narrative director, lead designer and animation director from the upcoming Rainbow 6: Patriots. Ubisoft confirmed the removal of one of the aforementioned four leads-creative director David Sears-from the project, and it seems all those removed from the project have since left Ubisoft.

Given this apparent development, it probably is not surprising that we have not heard anything about the controversial title the entire year, suggesting there are some changes in store for the game. Between Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Splinter Cell Conviction and this, premature announcements and tumultuous development are basically a rite of passage for a Tom Clancy game these days.

Prince of Persia Reboot

Finally, what appears to be a still from early footage of a new Prince of Persia reboot popped up on that game's Ubisoft forum in August depicting what looks to be a black Prince in an Egyptian-y environment. The art style in the still resembles some mysterious images NeoGAF user Wario64 claimed to have received via Twitter in late May.

An early June story from a Russian gaming site Playground.ru claimed that Ubisoft accidentally showed a few journalists a new Prince of Persia trailer, which apparently portrayed a silhouetted heavily armed bald warrior, was intended to be shown strictly internally behind closed doors at E3. According to the site's source, the game is still at least a year and half away, and may crib influence from the God of War and Assassin's Creed franchises.

Listen, I love Prince of Persia. With all that lovely animation and derring-do, Jordan Mechner's adventure games are well-loved for good reason. For those wanting to re-visit PoP's charms, the Wii Virtual Console get the 1992 SNES version.

But, guys: this Crazy Hunter game that appears in this week's Nintendo Download looks absolutely bizarre. Apparently you need to knock down tower-dwelling goats into a river, fish them out and stack them to the sky to grab hens that lay golden eggs. This doesn't seem like anything I ever saw on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom when I was growing up.

Did Marlin Perkins lie to me all those years ago?

Games

Balloon Pop Remix
Platform: 3DS/3DS XL
Price: $7.99

Balloon Pop Remix takes the classic Balloon Pop formula and turns it on its head. Use the stylus to draw lines on the puzzle board and all the balloons in the line's path will pop, leading to mesmerizing chain reactions.

Prince of Persia
Platform: Wii
Price: 800 Wii points

Survive perilous levels, rescue the princess from the evil Jaffar and claim the royal residence before the hourglass is empty. Beware of obstacles such as unpredictable floors and ceilings, hidden spikes and walls of flames.

Heyawake by Nikoli
Platform: 3DS
Price: $7.99

With the Nikoli puzzle series, you can enjoy high-quality "sudoku" puzzles, created by Nikoli, who gave the world-famous puzzle its name. The Nintendo 3DS allows for the realization of simple and easy to play operability. "Heyawake by Nikoli" contains 50 Heyawake puzzles. "Heyawake" is a puzzle in which you fill in the spaces according to the rules. It's called "heyawake" ("split rooms") because the face of the board is divided into rooms. This puzzle first appeared in 1992, but a plethora of solutions have been developed, allowing for a very progressive puzzle. Each time you discover a new strategic move, your skills of solution will improve. To ensure your long-term enjoyment, we're prepared both a "Stage Clear" mode and a "Random" mode. In "Stage Clear" mode, you progress by clearing puzzles one by one, and in "Random" mode puzzles are generated at random. Please enjoy this high-quality "Heyawake" game.

Crazy Hunter
Platform: 3DS
Price: $4.99

Mad about the ...Hens that lay the golden eggs. Now this is true madness!!!
Mission?
Capture the hens that lay the golden eggs that are scattered around the world.
How?
By creating a giant tower tall enough to reach the clouds where the hens are.
How to build the tower?
Firstly: you must knock over some goats that rest on candy-made platforms scattered along the river.
Secondly: fish out the goats you have knocked into the water.
Finally, and this isn't easy, stack the captured goats one on top of the other until you make the tower and can reach the hens that lay the golden eggs.
With what?
With a super high-powered speed boat, and a crane with a hook attached for fishing and building the tower.
If you enjoy madcap adventures, do not hesitate to take the controls of our character Dundee the Mad Crocodile.
Good luck!!!

Videos

The Black Keys "Little Black Submarines"
Available on Nintendo Video on: Sep 4, 2012

This week Nintendo Video™ premieres The Black Keys' 3D video for their hit song "Little Black Submarines". Filmed during a secret show in Nashville, the video intimately captures the raw energy this band generates on stage.

Video games need more "Call Me Ishmael."

That quote is one of the most famous opening lines in all of literature. Sure, its popularity is owed largely to being the first sentence in Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick. But that introduction is also memorable because you're learning about an important character from the very second you start reading.

Earlier this year, Max Payne 3 did the same trick, letting players know about Max's nihilistic wit and gallows humor before they ever fired a bullet or did a slo-mo dodge. If you never played a Max Payne game before, you still knew for the most part what kind of game you were getting in terms of mechanics. But the journey was about who you were playing as, which wasn't neccessarily something you could learn about just from shooting dudes.

I was reading an issue of Mark Waid's excellent run of Marvel Comics' Daredevil when I stopped to think about how great first-person narration is as a storytelling tool. One that games should use more of.

Look, let's acknowledge that games unfurl their experiences in different ways than books or other media. Games can deliver story through interaction rather than scripting. But, the ones that want to tell tales have a great under-used tool in voiceover narration. Most video games struggle with telling you about their characters. They stop the thing you've shown up to do—solve tricky puzzles, shoot lots of alien invaders, explore vast landscapes—to roll out a cutscene where you finally get to see emotions play out on the front of a character's face. That's usually where you get to hear about what's motivating a hero or a party member. And these moments usually bring the play of a game to a dead stop. No wonder people skip through them.

That's why the narration of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time or Bastion (which, granted, isn't first-person) works so wonderfully. You can still be bounding around a crumbling castle or hacking away at a random enemy while getting fed information about the protagonist and the world. Even Metroid: Other M—controversial as its version of Samus Aran was for some people—let you into that character's head in a way by virtue of narration that previous games hadn't. In fact, I've found that narration heightens the action with a personality-driven filter. I cared more about getting Max past a wave of enemies than, say, Master Chief because I'd had his voice and his pain ringing through my head before the shots rang out.

First-person narration gets used a lot in detective fiction and its very existence imparts a subliminal knowledge that the lead character makes it through okay. You're hearing the tale told after the smoke clears. Where that might rob some of the tension from the proceedings in a book or movie, you're the one that has to navigate to resolution in a video game. That character's voice becomes a catalyst for closure.

So, more narration, please. After all, if I'm going to spend 10, 20, 100 hours with a character, I better feel like I know him or her.

If you are super old like me (hello old friends!), you'll remember using some of these Apple computers. If you are a young whippersnapper (hello young friends!), you might not—but you should still enjoy perusing the retro hardware that's on display.

You are looking at a Russian collection of Apple computers, which website English Russia thinks might be one of the largest outside of the US. The collection belongs to Andrei Antonov, an Apple fan who's been collecting the company's hardware for the past three decades.

Last fall, Antonov talked about putting his collection on display in Moscow. This summer, he launched the Museum of Apple Technology. Visitors can see—and get hands on with—Apple hardware from over the years. It's even possible to play games like Prince of Persia.

Check out the museum in the above gallery, with more pictures in the links below.

Museum of Apple technology [DailyFresher via Anton Jaroshenko]

Московский музей техники Apple [БЛОГ ВИЗУАЛЬНЫХ ОСКОЛКОВ via English Russia]

Here's another awesome Fine Art to get your week started on the right foot: a collection of works by David Levy, aka vyle, aka another of my very favourite concept artists in the whole wide world.

David has worked on a number of big video games like Assassin's Creed (we've actually shown some of his art from this franchise before) and Prince of Persia, but in recent times has also lent his talents to major Hollywood projects like Tron and Prometheus.

He's now part of Steambot Studios, along with Sebastien Larroudé, whose work we featured here last week.

You can see more of David's amazing pieces at his personal site.

To see the larger pics in all their glory (or so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on them below and select "open in new tab".

This image is reportedly our first look at a brand new Prince of Persia game. It was posted by a user on Ubisoft's official forums, and down the bottom you can see the term POP_ZERO_2.

Is it real? Who knows, we're asking. Is it interesting? You bet. If it is real, that's not just a black Prince, it looks to have at least part of the game set somewhere closer to Egypt than the series' traditional Persian stomping grounds, going by the clothing on that crowd.

Prince of Persia Zero was the codename for an aborted attempt by Ubisoft a few years back to do something radical with the franchise, like taking it into the present day.

While there are signs this really could be from an in-development build of the game - the crowd is "floating", the visuals are pretty rough and they all appear to be looking straight ahead...at his junk - I also shouldn't need to tell you how easy it is to fake something like this.

Still, because it's so interesting, here it is. We'll update if we hear back from Ubisoft.

UPDATE - Check out these pics posted on NeoGAF back in May. From what can be made out of the silhouetted man's outfit and the those of the crowd behind him, it certainly looks similar to the image up top.

Sequel to Prince of Persia 2008 (v-4) [Ubisoft]

LEGO Batman! Prince of Persia! The Last Blade! Curling! If Nintendo had announced this week's downloadable titles during their E3 2012 press conferences, maybe we wouldn't all be trudging around like sad puppies today.

I mean check out that lineup! You've got the original platforming action hero, an SNK arcade classic, a sport that Canadians really enjoy, and Batman! And that's just the tip of the iceberg, really. I didn't even mention the cat puzzle game or the Art of Balance!

And hey, there's a new Dinosaur Office video from the College Humor folks. Between that and tons of Nintendo E3 videos, your 3DS might be the one to watch this weekend. Bring tissues.

Games

The Last Blade
Platform: WiiWare
Price: 800 Wii Points

Originally released in 1997, The Last Blade is a fighting game set in the "Bakumatsu" period of Japanese history, where 10-plus swordsmen are fighting for different purposes. The game is similar to its predecessors from the Samurai Showdown series released by the same company, but it differs in allowing players to choose between two sword types; the damage-focused "Power" or "Speed," which promotes speedy play. Other game elements include maneuvers like "Repel," which allows players to deflect enemy attacks, and "Sublime Slash," which cancels "Super Slice" and can be combined with "Super Secret Slice." Don't miss out on powerful -moves like "Super Secret Slice" and "Hidden Secret Slice."

Curling Super Championship
Platform: DSi / 3DS
Price: 500 DSi Points / $4.99

Curling is the world famous sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice toward a target area, the "house". Two teams, each of four players, take turns sliding heavy stones, also called "rocks". You can also challenge your friends to a multiplayer game to show everyone who the best player is!

Cat Frenzy
Platform: DSi / 3DS
Price: 200 DSi Points / $1.99

This adorable and relaxing puzzle introduces totally new twists to the popular slide and match-3 mechanics and, of course, lots of cats. Slide rows or columns of cute, cuddly cats until you create a chain of three or more cats of the same kind to pull them out of the well. The game features a Mission and Quick-play mode with a combined 140 levels and an explanation of all the rules in a quick tutorial. The Mission mode provides new challenging objectives in each level, such as: clear the board with only one slide, pull out all the shining cats, make a six-cat chain reaction. You need to accomplish the objective in order to advance to the next level. The Quick-play mode is all about beating your high score, and there are no restrictions on how to play. Just remember that longer chains can trigger funny bonuses and score you more points. The game will engage you in hours of blasting fun, even if you are not a cat person!

Prince of Persia
Platform: 3DS
Price: $4.99

Play one of gaming's most loved platformers. The classic Prince of Persia is now available for download. Relive this classic platforming experience, often heralded as a pioneer of the platforming genre. This re-release is faithful to the original, complete with the dashing acrobatics of the Prince that made the game famous. Traverse sprawling levels, dodge deadly traps such as spikes and guillotines, and clash swords with palace guards – all before facing the evil Grand Vizier and rescuing the princess. But be quick: you only have one hour. The sands of time are flowing….

Art of Balance TOUCH!
Platform: 3DS
Price: $6.99

Grab your stylus and build a balanced stack in this physics-based puzzler! Puzzle games must be addictive. This was our top priority during the development of the game. That's why we designed 200 levels that not only challenge your skills but also your imagination. With its perfect touch controls Art of Balance TOUCH! is easy to pick up and hard to put away. Seeking a real challenge? Then try out the new endurance mode and drive your score ever higher. Art of Balance TOUCH! brings the ultimate "just one more puzzle" experience to your Nintendo 3DS.

Demos

LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes
Platform: 3DS

Batman and Robin return in LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, the highly-anticipated sequel to LEGO Batman: The Videogame. This time the Dynamic Duo join forces with other famous DC super heroes including Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern to stop the notorious villains Lex Luthor and The Joker from destroying Gotham City.

Videos

Dinosaur Office: Take Your Kid to Work Day (Available June 8)

Kids can be such a mouthful.

But the data was saved on computer disks that were more than 20 years old—would they still be readable after all these years? Would it be safe to put them in an old disk-reader and risk losing the only copy of a classic game?

Sounds like a job for Tony Diaz and Jason Scott, two computer collectors and archivists who helped Mechner pull the data from the disks and in the process, save Prince of Persia.

In a great article over at Wired, Gus Mastrapa recounts how he was there when Diaz an Scott used their archival tools (and an old Apple computer) to thoroughly analyze and clean the disks, working through some of Mechner's other old prototypes as well. Among them, a stolen version of

As a young programmer, Jordan Mechner was keen to create something marketable. He looked at the best-selling games for the Apple II and saw that a clone of the arcade game Space Invaders was doing particularly well. So he knocked up a version of Atari's hit Asteroids. But by the time his version was ready, game publishers had begun to crack down on blatant copies, and he shelved the project.

The Asteroids restoration doesn't go as smoothly as the rebirth of Quadris. When Diaz loads the game, Mechner notices that the graphics aren't rendering correctly. The space rocks look glitchy and malformed. Is there an error in the original code? Is the configuration of Diaz' machine different than Mechner's college Apple II? Or has the disk just not held up well over time? Mechner's version of Asteroids has been saved, but it will need restoration.

Fortunately, Prince of Persia loaded fine; the source code is safe, and Mechner has made it available to anyone who wants it.

Man, I wish I could track down and scan all of the old game-copy disks and other floppies I had when I was a kid. I bet there was some amazing stuff on them.

The Geeks Who Saved Prince of Persia's Source Code From Digital Death [Wired]