Mini Prince by Anne Bras

[David]

Updates on the 24th:

2020-04-24 Check out Mini Prince - a new MS-DOS fan-made platformer by Anne Bras. A stripped down version of Prince of Persia 1 to its bare minimum featuring a one whole level, full ASCII action, a 104x80 resolution, sword fighting, and sound.

Official site: http://www.miniprince.nl/ -- No download yet, though the HTML source includes a commented-out link to nowhere.
I wonder where did Jalal get the cover from, since it's not on the official site.

2020-04-24 Check out Karlgamer's speedrun of PoP 1 beating the world record (game completed in 14:07). Click here.

Video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/535333915
It seems the world record doesn't include these: viewtopic.php?p=24415#p24415 -- Maybe because they are tool-assisted?

[Norbert]

[...] by Anne Bras.

I recognize his name.
He's from the Netherlands (where I live) and he's known for his large collection of PC game big boxes.
In one of his talks, here, he's showing a photo slide with a PoP2 box.

[David]

he's known for his large collection of PC game big boxes.

You can find a big panorama picture of his collection on his site: http://www.annebras.nl/pcking/
In the picture, you can find PoP (1,2,3D) in the top row, on the 6th shelf from the left.

You can also find separate images of the PoP 1,2,3D boxes (and their contents) on the collection page, in the 4th row from the bottom.

PoP also appears in his top 10 list.

[Norbert]

PoP also appears in his top 10 list.

Ah, and at #3 no less.

[David]

I've found more things about Mini Prince:

Trailer (April 27): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7QncFa6Atg -- I wonder why isn't it linked from the official site.
Announcement (May 1): https://twitter.com/hangman3d/status/12 ... 5878423552 -- I hope it's really soon now...
Announcement (April 21): https://twitter.com/hangman3d/status/12 ... 7526170624 -- I see it was retweeted by PoPModding.
Announcement (April 17): https://www.instagram.com/p/B_GPRgIHASa/ -- So the game is made with QBasic.
A short article in Portuguese (April 19): https://planetamsdos.blogspot.com/2020/ ... rince.html

EDIT: I moved all Mini Prince-related posts from POPUW Topic to this new thread.

[David]

Downloads have been added!
http://www.miniprince.nl/

[David]

Anne wrote a blog post about the game: https://pckingblog.wordpress.com/2020/0 ... e-out-now/

Since he is famous for collecting boxed games, he is selling boxes for this game.
The boxes are made by Gal Shemesh, whose name can be familiar from here: viewtopic.php?p=16673#p16673


He also mentions there are secrets in the game.

I already found one of them (before I found the blog post).
Hint:

Spoiler: show

You need to finish the game with a high enough score for one of them.

And another thing, although it's likelier to be a bug rather than a secret:

Spoiler: show

You can go through walls if you try hard enough. (Only in the DOS version.)
If you go further than the edge of the screen, the game will crash.

If you choose to "break" the right-side wall, the smiley-prince will even leave a trail:

you_can_go_into_the_wall.png (2.12 KiB) Viewed 10165 times

According to the texts I found in the EXEs, there is at least one more hidden secret (or maybe two?).

I also found a slightly funny error message which that game hasn't used so far:

Spoiler: show

Tulips and cheese!!! The game broke!

I'm also wondering why are there multiple EXE files.
All of them will start the same game, even though the files are different.

[David]

He also mentions there are secrets in the game.

Some are shown here: https://twitter.com/hangman3d/status/12 ... 5916326913

[David]

bad

Why do you find it bad?

[Norbert]

Since he is famous for collecting boxed games, he is selling boxes for this game.
The boxes are made by Gal Shemesh, whose name can be familiar from here: viewtopic.php?p=16673#p16673

Attached some related photos, I took from Anne's site.
An unboxing video here.
As unboxer Clint says, the rotoscoping sheet is meant as a joke, with all resulting frames being just the one smiley.

[Norbert]

I'm also wondering why are there multiple EXE files.
All of them will start the same game, even though the files are different.

My guess is that MOD stands for mode, as in text mode, producing characters of different sizes, similar to those available in Puny Prince (8x8, 8x14, 8x16, 9x14, 9x16). DOSBox, perhaps through its "machine=" setting, must be ignoring/overriding the modes requested by the executables. One way to sort-of test this hypothesis might be to run the EXEs in FreeDOS though virtualization. But who has the time.

[David]

Anne has published the secrets at the bottom of his post about the game:
https://pckingblog.wordpress.com/2020/0 ... e-out-now/

1. The Boss Key:

Spoiler: show

1. The Boss Key:
Just press F9 during gameplay.

This one is not really a secret, as it's documented in the README.TXT included with the game.

2. Cheats:

Spoiler: show

2. Cheats:
Type “PRINCEMINIHIT” in the first room to activate the cheats
SHIFT + T = Extra bar of energy
K = Kill on-screen enemy
+ = Increase time (steps)
– = Decrease time (steps)
Enemy corpses will be BLOODY!!!

For some reason the line breaks are missing in the post.

3. Unlockable #1

Spoiler: show

3. Unlockable #1
Finish the game with a score of 150 or higher.

After this, the game will show a picture similar to its poster/cover when you start it.
The score is the number of remaining steps, so you pretty much have to jump everywhere instead of walking.
There is a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFrjc1_0_u4

4. Unlockable #2

Spoiler: show

4. Unlockable #2
There is a secret entrance to a secret room with a portal that is only open if you reach it before you timer passes “120” (press SPACE to check). After that the entrance closes. This entrance is located 1 room below the sword and then 2 rooms to the right.

The Video Game Atlas has a map for Mini Prince, and it shows this portal.

I tried to climb up through the wall there, but nothing happened.
The portal doesn't even appear. (Assuming that it's visible as shown on the map.)
The timer showed 210 when I reached the room, that's well within the limit.
Am I missing something?
Do I have to something else first?

UPDATE:
It seems you have to reach that room before the timer reaches 220, not 120.
That's pretty tight, I could not reach the room with more than 223 steps left.
The 120 may be a typo?