This was the first game I ever played on a PC, and it will always have a place in my heart. I first played it on an 8086 PC-compatible machine with an amber monochrome CRT monitor (the kind usually paired with MDA or Hercules-style graphics, where everything appeared in those beautiful orange shades). Later, my father bought a 386 PC with a VGA graphics card capable of 256-color modes, which on my monochrome display looked like 256 shades of gray. A couple of years after that, we finally upgraded to an Acer VGA color CRT monitor, and seeing the same game in full color felt like entering a completely different world.

As a small note of color, when I was a teenager I helped the local police department clean up one of their PCs, which had been infected with multiple viruses, Michelangelo is the one I still remember, though there were others. After cleaning the machine, I installed Prince of Persia for them. The policemen were absolutely thrilled to have that video game on their computer.

My first exposure to Prince.exe was in the computer lab at school, which has a tiny set of DOS games, including digdug, space invaders and some typing game.

I remember when I was around 6 or 7, a boy a couple years older (and therefore, seemingly infinitely wiser) sharing the folk advice: "Play the other games first, don't play Prince of Persia too early or it will ruin all the other games for you"

The graphics of Prince of persia took me to those dungeons more effectively than any 4k ray traced modern game could...