It happens even when he doesnt mean it to.
He was drafted as a soldier, Mechner says.
Whats interesting to me is that a lot of these echoes are unconscious.
But the personal resonance can hardly be called a coincidence.
History-making and storytelling is a habit in the Mechner family.
Some of those have since been published, as accounts of the development ofKaratekaand the original Prince Of Persia.
Now, Mechner has written a non-fiction graphic novel, Replay.
I’ve always been fascinated by history, he says.
In an odd way, I feel like Ive come to know them.
Prince Of Persiais of course a natural candidate.
Its been discussed, I hope it will happen.
As it turns out, Mechners ambitions as a comic book writer pre-date his love affair with game design.
Without them just being like, Oh, this was made by a kid.
But even in the age of the arcade, his storytelling instincts began to take hold.
It was only a matter of time before the storytelling took centre stage.
While crude by todays standards, its sometimes considered the birthplace of cinematic gaming.
The smooth character motion wowed players, and Mecher developed it further over the course of the 90s.
The resulting frames were drained of their colour and then turned into drawings, coloured by hand.
The visual inspiration was graphic novels and Art Nouveau.
The Last Express took four years to make - a lifetime in 90s game development.
On launch it won awards, but went unnoticed by the broader gaming audience.
But that didnt happen, Myst was the only one.
And ultimately, Mechners conviction that animated actors were the future of gaming was borne out.
Incredible evocative, Druckmann writes of Replay.
A powerful emotional experience.
It was really that I fell in love with it and wanted to do it.
The games signature rewind mechanic is actually an echo of a similar tool in The Last Express.
Time has a way of working itself into practically everything Mechner works on.
Later, Mechner took Prince Of Persia to Hollywood, pursuing his cinematic inclinations to their logical conclusion.
I knew that I wouldnt be taken seriously, he says.
The story that I pitched and wrote had to stand on its own merits.
With Prince Of Persia, I was the first of five writers.
But the draft was solid enough to get the film made.
Its a story told in the course of Replay with wry self-deprecation.
Today, Mechner still lives in Montpellier, but is dedicated to writing and drawing his graphic novels.
And that Prince Of Persia, which started in New York, has found its place in Montpellier too.
None of this is lost on Mechner.
We could say that these time echoes are accidental, he says.
But its difficult to find which direction causality flows in.
Its like an ocean in a storm.
Theres a conversation between the past and present.
I cant explain it, but I can appreciate it.
