Jordan Mechner

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Jordan Mechner (born 1960s) is a recognized game programmer and game designer.

Mechner's first hit game was Karateka (1984), written while he was still a student at Yale University. With the release of Prince of Persia in 1989, Mechner revolutionized the quality of computer animation used in computer and video games. 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 his game. No animation used in games up to that date had such realistic movements.

Mechner was born in New York City and graduated from Yale University in 1985. In 1993, Jordan formed Smoking Car Productions, an entertainment software development group based in San Francisco, to create The Last Express. While critically acclaimed, the game failed commercially, and Smoking Car Productions was forced to close.

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. The third and final chapter in the Sands of Time trilogy, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, was released in December 2005.

In regard to Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Mechner was quoted in the December 2005 issue of Wired Magazine as saying: "I'm not a fan of the artistic direction, or the violence that earned it an M rating. The story, character, dialog, voice acting, and visual style were not to my taste."

Mechner today divides his time between writing screenplays and designing video games. He also wrote and directed two award-winning documentaries, Waiting for Dark and Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story.