Earlier this year, Jordan Mechner, the creator of such games as Karateka, The Last Express, and Prince of Persia, was sent a box of old material from his father’s closet. In it was the original source code to Prince of Persia for the Apple II, a 1989 game he’d sold after years of work. The only problem was, he had no idea how he could rescue it from the fading floppy disks. In a fast-paced storytelling atmosphere, computer historian Jason Scott talks about how that source code was rescued, what it means to bring something lost back from the shadows, and what lessons can be learned from the process.
Jason Scott is a computer historian and documentary filmmaker, currently a “Free Range Archivist” at the Internet Archive. He also runs textfiles.com and would spot Irongeek anytime.