Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow & The Flame

Overview

Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow & The Flame is an action-adventure game with puzzle-solving elements, acrobatics and swordfighting. It is also the sequel to Jordan Mechner's 1989 rotoscoped pioneer Prince of Persia and its story continues shortly after the previous game ended.

The Prince discovers that Jaffar, the villain of the first game, has magically disguised himself as another Prince and has tricked the court, leading the real Prince to quickly escape the palace guards and figure out how to unmask the wily sorcerer. This journey takes him across the world, eventually landing in a kingdom that has fallen to the shadowy forces of darkness. He eventually discovers this kingdom was his own, proving his royal lineage. Armed with magic artifacts gathered from his adventures, he returns to Persia to take on Jaffar and rescue his love, the Princess.

The game expands on the original, adding more enemies, traps, obstacles and other elements as well as multiple scenery changes. The game-wide time limit is still intact as well, forcing players to find the best routes to quickly complete levels. It was originally released on Mac and PC, eventually making its way to the SNES console, the FM Towns Japanese home computer and mobile devices. A version of the game could be found in the 2003 Prince of Persia: Sands of Time reboot as a hidden bonus, but only on the NTSC Xbox versions; all other versions of the game (including the PAL Xbox) had the original Prince of Persia instead.