“If Grandpa had been less lucky, you wouldn’t have been born. These few words from his father, Jordan Mechner still remembers, thirty years later. He even put them in a bubble, in his comic Replay, Memories of a family, which comes out this Wednesday. His grandfather, an Austrian Jewish doctor, was a soldier during the First World War. Then he had to flee his country, threatened by the Nazis during the Second World War. So yes, if the story had been different, if this man had not survived the fighting or if he had had bad encounters during his exile, his grandson, Jordan Mechner, would not be there to tell it. And Prince of Persia would not exist.
Because Jordan Mechner was the young prodigy who programmed alone, at the end of the 1980s, when he was not yet 25 years old, this cult video game, translated into six languages and worn on a good twenty different media for over twenty years. In Replay, Memories of a family, he tells how he conceived this captivating title and mixes his story with those of his grandfather and his father, uprooted from their country. “This project, I think it would have been impossible to do otherwise than in comics, says Jordan Mechner to 20 minutes. Comics allow, more easily than other media, to jump, constantly, as I did, through time. »
“When you are a child, you are not interested in the experiences of the parents”
By using different colors, box shapes and fonts, the author and designer manages to marvelously carry us around, almost simultaneously, in Central Europe, at the beginning of the 20th century, in the footsteps of his grandfather and of his father, in New York, where he grew up, in California, where he created Prince of Persia… Or near Montpellier, by the sea, where he settled a few years ago to pursue his video game dreams. “When you’re a child, you’re not interested in the experiences of parents or grandparents,” continues Jordan Mechner. It is so, it is universal. When I turned 50, it became a gift for me to ask my father questions, and to take an interest in his past. But when we were younger, we had our own concerns. Me, as a child, it was drawing. Then, it was the creation of video games. »
In his comic strip, Jordan Mechner also says that when his grandfather wrote his memoirs, a thousand typewritten pages recounting the war and his exile, he was a teenager. It was in 1978. And that year, he was offered an Apple II, the computer on which he will program Karatekahis very first video game, a pioneer of beat them allThen Prince of Persia. So of course, the stories of the grandfather did not fascinate him at that time. “He arrived home one day with all these notebooks,” recalls Jordan Mechner. And I was hunched over my computer. »
“Me, as a child, it was”Star Wars Or star trek ?”
But his hours strumming in front of his machine will not be in vain. In Replay, Memories of a family, Jordan Mechner details how he developed the hit that made him famous, filming his brother climbing a wall and digitizing his movements, or watching old swashbuckling movies, to give more realism to the movements of the hero. “At the time, we were necessarily self-taught, confides the creator of Prince of Persia. There were no video game schools yet. In my high school, there was a computer, but absolutely none of the teachers knew how to use it… It was only me and a few friends who knew how it worked. »
However, despite the precocity of his talent, Jordan Mechner cannot help but compare his existence to that of his grandfather, and his father. He takes shape, at the age of 21, on the platform of a station, his computer under his arm, the good life, while they have known troubled times, and had to change countries and languages. “It is undoubtedly something that is not uncommon among the descendants of immigrants or people who have lived through a war, wonders the author. We have the impression that our problems are not much, compared to what they have experienced. Me, as a child, my problems were “Would you rather Star Wars Or star trek At the same age, my grandfather and my father were in danger. I felt like whatever I did, it would never matter the same.”
The story of “Prince of Persia” marked several generations of players
Jordan Mechner will have marked the history of video games. The techniques he used to Prince of Persia, long before motion capture, its atmosphere and its sobriety (no frills on the screen, in this game) have inspired many developers. The story he tells, that of an adventurer trying to escape the guards of an evil vizier, has also marked several generations of players. Was it a way of evoking the fate of his brave grandfather? “It’s something that I absolutely did not realize at the time, explains Jordan Mechner. It was while working on this comic that I realized that there was perhaps a link between the story told by the game, and that of my family. The hero is a refugee, prisoner of a dungeon, who must escape. The link with my grandfather’s destiny, I realize today…”
This is not the only coincidence, at Mechner-Ziegler. On his Apple II, developing Prince of Persia, Jordan Mechner unknowingly coded a little something that marked the life of his grandfather a few decades earlier. We won’t spoil anything, of course. But the end of this story will leave you, for sure, speechless.
Replay, Memories of a family, by Jordan Mechner (Editions Delcourt/Shampooing), 29 euros (19 euros digitally). More information here.