2 1 1 Jason Scott Rescuing The Prince of Persia from the sands of time
Why Hacker News recommends it
Repeatedly recommended as a favorite tech talk and a great example of digital preservation work.
What it is
Jason Scott's DerbyCon 2012 talk on rescuing the Prince of Persia source code from old floppy disks, working with the game's author Jordan Mechner. It is a story of digital archaeology and recovering data from ancient media.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2014 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec voltagex_ · 2014-08 · on “Prints”
My favourite example of digital archaeology from recent years is [LINK] - saving the Prince of Persia floppies. [this video]
Recommends _asummers · 2014-12 · on “Each New Boot a Miracle – DOSBOX in the Browser”
If you've not seen any of Jason Scott's other work, I personally recommend his talks on the Prince of Persia[0], Mario 64[1], and crackers fighting crackers via crack screens[2]. [3] This one is just funny. [0] [this video] [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]
Recommends voltagex_ · 2015-04 · on “3,000 floppy disk archive (1982–1994)”
I missed that distinction when I posted the link. I'm sure they had difficulty rescuing Price of Persia. If you have some time to spare, watch [this video] (or read [LINK] and the many other sources)
Recommends voltagex_ · 2016-10 · on “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”
Your second link reminded me of [LINK] (which definitely builds on some of Matt's work). [LINK] - C++17 for the Commodore 64. Probable language warnings for my other suggestions: * Rescuing Prince of Persia from the Sands of Time [this video] (was this talk ever given elsewhere?) * And You Shall Know Me By My Trail of Documentation - [LINK] * The History and Evolution of Computer Viruses - [LINK]
Recommends noufalibrahim · 2026-06 · on “How we made hit video game Prince of Persia”
Was going to say the same thing. It's a very nice trip down memory lane. Also, Jason Scott's talk on how he recovered the original source code from a bunch of dusty disks [this video]
Cites dalke · 2015-01 · on “How can archive.org release 2,500 free DOS browser games (Dune, Oregon Trail)?”
Presumably they have copyright permissions. For example, see the work done by Jason Scott of archive.org with the author of Prince of Persia to track down the source, at [this video] . But it's archive.org and they push the edge; in part because we don't know where that edge is.
Cites voltagex_ · 2017-02 · on “Development content accidentally shipped on a DOS CD-ROM game from 1993”
How it was saved: [this video] I'm sure there was an article about it on ascii.textfiles.com but I can't find it.
Cites noufalibrahim · 2024-04 · on “I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs”
I haven't looked recently but I did search a while ago for a 5.25" USB floppy drive but never found any. Several 3.5" though. Also, I haven't done any specific climate control for the books or the disks. The notebooks are still readable and I can even tell the difference in the parts I wrote with a ball pen and a fountain pen. Many of the disks are damaged with fungal growth on the magnetic medium and I doubt I'd be able to read them even with a drive. It's quite challenging to read off an old disk. Jason Scott (the famous digital archivist) had a nice talk on recovering the original source code for Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia from ancient disks that mentions some of the challenges. [V