It was one of the most extraordinary moments in all my years of gaming. I was in Montreal, inside the offices of Ubisoft, and Jordan Mechner was introducing us to the reinvention of his classic game, Prince of Persia, a new project he and Ubisoft were working on called The Sands Of Time. And honestly, I didn’t get it. Why had they flown us here to show us a third-person platformer of a largely forgotten franchise? 

Movement in The Sands Of Time is absolutely exquisite, and controlling the titular Prince was certainly very pleasant. He could wall run and perform impressive flips, and the combat did its job—this was unquestionably a very decent game. But why was the team at Ubisoft so excited about it? And then I missed the landing on a wall run atop one of the large chambers and fell to the Prince’s death. Game over. Except, of course, it wasn’t. I hit rewind.

It was a revelation. Revolutionary. I watched my mistake reversing itself in front of me, as the Prince unfell back up the room, hit the wall with both feet, and ran backward onto the ledge from which he’d originally leapt. Instead of having to start over from the last save point, I was just back at the beginning of that tricky maneuver. And I thought: This changes everything.

As is painfully often the case in the world of gaming, it changed precisely nothing. But it remains the case that this game, released 20 years ago this month, should have changed how third-person games are approached. Rewarding failure rather than punishing it—this was an idea absolutely every developer should steal, whether there’s a narrative justification or not.

It’s fair to say that gaming has headed in a different direction since The Sands of Time's 2003 release. Where once I dreamed of a gaming world where forward progress would be driven by in-game mechanics that support you on your journey, that’s not quite where we’ve ended up. Soulslikes and roguelites have instead emphasized punishing failure, where repeating large sections of a game in a slow grind toward progress becomes the core point of playing.

Please don’t misunderstand—I love some roguelite action, endlessly persisting with inching slightly further forward each time I try. But I still dearly wish that third-person action games would implement The Sands of Time’s rewind mechanic. Not only is it utterly magical, but it screams of a game that just wants to be enjoyed.

The Sands of Time remains exactly that sort of game. At two decades old, it may look a touch creaky, but its joyful desire to be completed still shines. The Prince’s movement is still a pleasure to perform, although you might want to spend some time wrangling with its setup and controls. This walkthrough is pretty invaluable for that, which will help you set up the game in widescreen and offer fixes in case it doesn’t recognize your controller.

Play it, and imagine the alternate timeline where The Sands of Time’s ethos was adopted and became an integral part of gaming. It’s lovely here