It’s not every day that you see code like this:
* Superimpose “Turn disk over” message
*——————————-
FLIPDISKMSG
lda #flipbox
ldx #>flipbox
jmp superimage
Yep. That’s assembly language, about as far from Ruby as you can get. It’s from the original, Apple II version of Prince of Persia, one of the best games in anyone’s childhood, anywhere. As we mentioned before, Jordan Mechner found the original disks in his father’s place last month and was looking for someone to help pull the files off of the disks. Thanks to Jason Scott, Mechner held a copy party in his house to drag, kicking and screaming, into the light of day.
You can read about the adventure here but Scott’s description of the process is actually quite telling:
That’s right: floppy disks are as old media as a pile of 48s mouldering in someone’s garage. They’re not just obsolete, they’re almost completely dead. I have some old floppys that once held the operating system I wrote in high school and I’m proud to say that I was able to transfer them long before any real damage came to the media. It’s amazing that Mechner and his buddies grabbed these bits and its even more amazing that you can grab all of the code right here and play with it yourself.