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Jordan Mechner (born 4 June 1964)[1] is an American game programmer, game designer, screenwriter and movie director.
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Life and career
Mechner was born in New York City. He graduated from Yale University with a BA in Psychology in 1985. He is best known for creating the Prince of Persia franchise in 1989.
Mechner's first hit game was Karateka (1984), written while he was still an undergraduate at Yale University. Prince of Persia, released in 1989, was noted for its fluid animation of human figures. Both titles were published by Brøderbund. For the animations used in Prince of Persia, Mechner spent days studying videos and photographs of his brother David running and jumping and meticulously replicated the actions in the game. In his childhood, Jordan did not have a computer of his own, so he used his friend and colleague Kenneth Knox's computer to feed his interest in computers.
In 1993, he formed Smoking Car Productions, an entertainment software development group based in San Francisco, to create The Last Express. While critically acclaimed, the game did not do well commercially.
In 2003, Ubisoft released the fourth installment of the Prince of Persia saga, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, on which Mechner collaborated as writer and game designer. He was involved in name only with the fifth installment, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, which was a sequel to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as he was busy writing the script for the feature film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The film, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Mike Newell, has completed filming and is scheduled to be released by Walt Disney Pictures on May 28, 2010. The sixth chapter in the video game franchise, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, was released in December 2005. A seventh game, Prince of Persia, was released in 2008.
Mechner today divides his time between writing screenplays, graphic novels, and designing video games. He also wrote and directed two award-winning documentaries, including Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story. He is writing the screenplay for a film adaptation of Michael Turner's Fathom starring Megan Fox.[2] He is collaborating with artists LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland on a new graphic novel to be published by First Second Books in 2010.[3]
Mechner has posted old journals and videos from the 1980s, describing the making of the first Prince of Persia game, on his personal blog, where he also posts sketches and current information about his projects.[4]
Games
- Karateka (1984)
- Prince of Persia (1989)
- Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame (1993)
- The Last Express (1997)
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003)
Movies
- Waiting for Dark (1993)
- Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story (2003)
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) (screenwriter)
References
- ^ Mechner, J.: "Blog 4 June 1989", Jordan Mechner's website
- ^ Megan Fox to star in 'Fathom'
- ^ From Games to Comics
- ^ Jordan Mechner's Official Bio
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
