(Image credit: Jordan Mechner, Broderbund)

When I started working at PC Gamer in 2014, I began what I didn't realize at the time would become a bit of a ritual. A few weeks before the San Francisco Game Developer's Conference that year, I sent the creator of one of PC gaming's first masterpieces, Prince of Persia, an email asking if he'd be in town. Jordan Mechner politely responded that he wouldn't be making the trip from his home in Paris to San Francisco that year. But I kept trying when the conference rolled back around, thinking maybe this would be the year the stars aligned.

It took a decade, but in 2024 we finally made it happen: Mechner joined a roundtable I hosted alongside other veterans from designing PC games in the '80s and '90s to explore their long careers.…