Design Better14 Nov 2025

Video Rewind: Jordan Mechner: Pioneering game designer on creating Prince of Persia, Karateka, and a new graphic novel memoir

This is a preview of a premium episode. You can find a video version of the full episode on our YouTube channel: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dvoGPZEY1g⁠ We’ve been on the road this week, recording some in-person episodes in Portland Oregon, with Ryan Coulter—co-founder of The James Brand, and the wonderfully hilarious graphic designer Aaron Draplin. We’re excited to bring you this episodes soon, and in the meantime we’re rewinding to one of our favorite episodes this year with Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner. You may have heard that we’re publishing more video from our episodes, and you can now find a video version of this episode on YouTube. Enjoy! *** As a kid in the 80’s, Eli fell in love with games on computers like the Apple II, Commodore 64, and later the Amiga and Macintosh. One of the very first games he played was called Karateka, which was inspiring for the realistic movements of its digital karate antagonists, even on a black-and-green Apple II monitor. Our guest today, Jordan Mechner, created Karateka while an undergrad at Yale University in 1984, and it went on to be a commercial success. He followed it up with the game Prince of Persia (you’ll hear a clip from the soundtrack in the introduction, which Jordan’s father composed and which Jordan invented a way to transpose onto the Apple II’s tinny speakers before game soundtracks were widespread on the machine). Jordan documented the creation of the game in a wonderful published version of his diaries called The Making of Prince of Persia, and we spoke with him about how he taught himself the skills to build successful video games in a pre-internet era, why he journaled about his work process (and what it taught him), and about his new graphic novel Replay, a memoir recounting his own family story of war, exile and new beginnings. Karateka on the Apple IIPrince of Persia on the Apple II (play the Mac version online here) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(261)

Mack Paul: Co-author of Miracle Road on designing places where innovation happens

In the mid-1950s, North Carolina was one of the poorest states in the country. Its economy ran on tobacco, furniture, and textiles — all three in decline — and its universities were turning out talent...

17 Sep 44min

Federico Casalegno: Samsung EVP and MIT Design Lab founder on what 20,000 years of human creativity means for design today

When Samsung’s CEO asked Federico Casalegno to redesign the cameras on the company’s phones, Federico told him he was the wrong person for the job. He wasn’t an optical engineer. He didn’t understand ...

10 Sep 24min

Jonathan Adler returns: The minimalist inside the maximalist

Jonathan Adler was one of our favorite guests, so we’ve been angling to get him back ever since. He started as a potter and now designs furnishings and interiors that are decadent, but layered with me...

2 Sep 44min

Clay Parker Jones: author of "Hidden Patterns" on why your team isn't really a team

We all know that there is something fractured about the workplace, that makes it inefficient, and at times inhumane. If only someone was thinking deeply about those problems, and how to address them… ...

28 Aug 23min

Angel Steger: Wealthfront's VP of Design on what architecture teaches you about software

A few years ago, Dropbox redesigned its website and revenue dropped by thirty percent. It was an all-hands-on-deck moment: people working weekends, everyone hunting for a systemic failure. Visit our ...

21 Aug 52min

Ben Drury: Yoto co-founder on audio, imagination, and screen-free design

Like a lot of parents, Eli struggled over the years to get his kids more into reading and away from screens. He wasn’t necessarily on the search for a technological solution, but then an interesting d...

13 Aug 50min

Jeff Hammoud: Chief Design Officer of Rivian on constraints, color, and what separates designers from stylists

This is a special bonus episode, an interview with Rivian’s Chief Design Officer, Jeff Hammoud. We’ve got all the audio here, but it’s worth heading over to our Youtube channel at dbtr.co/youtube to w...

5 Aug 46min

Eric Ries: Lean Startup author on why good companies go bad, and why good design is critical to success

Fifteen years ago, Eric Ries handed a generation of founders a playbook. When Eli was in a Palo Alto-based startup accelerator in 2011, The Lean Startup felt like the only book anyone in that ecosyste...

22 Jul 34min