Jordan Mechner filmed his brother running and jumping in a parking lot with a VHS camcorder in the late 1980s, then traced those frames by hand into a computer. That rotoscoping technique gave the 1989 Prince of Persia a sense of weight and momentum no other game had, sent it to more than 20 platforms, and set off a 35-year saga that includes a $336 million Disney film, corporate buyouts, and the accidental birth of Assassin's Creed.

This episode traces the whole arc: Mechner leaving for NYU film school, the 1999 Prince of Persia 3D disaster during the Broderbund and Mattel shuffles, Ubisoft's Sands of Time reboot with its time-rewinding dagger, the corporate-mandated dark turn of Warrior Within, the Assassin project that outgrew its own franchise, the cancelled Redemption pitch and Sands of Time remake, and how The Lost Crown and The Rogue ...