Leap ahead to today, as Ubisoft releases Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in New Zealand - available on PC, PS2, GameCube, GBA and Xbox, bringing series creator Jordan Mechner back to head the development team and revive the franchise for its first authentic 3D update and the prequel to the original two titles.

The concept is simple. You, controlling the prince, are an impossibly athletic individual who is also rather handy with a blade. You can jump high, run along walls, hang from precarious platforms at ludicrous heights, jump from wall to wall (a la Mario) and kick a lot of ass with a sword - even when out numbered. The game is presented in third-person, with a number of different camera options (including the ability to take direct control, even first-person, with the right analogue stick) and a clever, high-dynamic light range renderer that gives the game a soft and surreal look (check out the screenshots).

Sands of Time tells the tale of a prince who inadvertently unleashes the terrible powers of a magical hourglass that is presented to the Sultan as a gift after the prince's father invades an Indian palace. The sands within the hourglass turn everyone they touch, including animals and the prince's father, into sand creatures. A conquered Princess Farah, also captured as a gift, cannot stop the prince's actions, but now needs the dagger of time accompanied the hourglass and which can draw the sands back out of its victims. The prince, not trusting her pleas, does not trust her but soon finds he needs her help to undo the catastrophic curse. What happens next, well, you'll just need to find that out for yourself.

The gameplay mechanics will be instantly familiar to anyone that has played an earlier Prince of Persia game. Using a combination of nimble skill, timing, control and oftentimes luck, you will need to navigate each area and dispatch any bad guys that dwell within. Most areas also have puzzle elements inspired by Ico (no, not just hunting for switches or key cards) that typically require neurons that control both intellectual problem solving and fast-twitch action response; you'll need to think as well as bash the bad guys.

The controls are something heaven-sent - the original games gave you a lot of control over the prince's antics but Sands of Time gives you a lot more yet at the same time the controls are smart, intuitive, prompt in their response and downright genius in their design. You'll be running along walls then jumping to ropes and swinging to kick switches long before you even realise it. The fact that this game spent a long time (after the core technology was completed) being polished is absolutely undeniable. Developers, please take note - this is important, and we gamers appreciate it.

When it comes to combat, the prince is one incredibly agile and adept young lad. He can take on several foes at once, jump over their heads, bounce off walls, swing his blade whilst hanging by one arm from a ledge, dart and dodge about the place and more - all whilst tackling a variety of foes, each of which behaves differently and identifiably. He can switch between targets at will as well, something it is key to understand early as the AI will try to surround you (unlike other games where they are content to wait there turn to attack).

The prince's animation, you'll be pleased to know, is every bit on par with the incredible (for the time...) motion-captured (sort of) animation of the original. He is also superbly modelled, and everyone else you encounter in the game is equally well realised. So well, in fact, that the average gamer might not even notice it; there is so much attention to detail that it recedes into the background as your eye (and therefore brain) accepts it as natural and fluid motion. Combined with the huge array of moves on offer, you can see just how much time was spent on this part of the game alone.

The sound, like the graphics, is more than up to the task. Cinematics, unlockables, grunts / groans, excitement - all of these things and more are carried off with aplomb, building (with the graphics) an atmosphere which is undeniably Prince. The clash of steel upon steel, the draw and release of an arrow, the crunch of collapsing masonry or collapsing platform - it's all here. It's all good.

Updating a classic 2D game and dragging it (often kicking and screaming) into three dimensions is a task that is fraught with danger. Many have tried and failed with only a few successfully making the transition. Even then they often lose what it was that made the games what they were in the process: arriving instead as an altogether different experience. A few notable titles (Super Mario 64 stands out as a highlight) have set the benchmark. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is, without a doubt, the new benchmark-setter. It has the same gameplay, challenge, feel and scope as the original without limiting the player to a pseudo-3D game. It adds new elements which are so right you'd be forgiven for thinking they were there all along. It's easily, without doubt, one of the strongest contenders for Gameplanet's game of the year awards in May we have ever seen; if it were a movie, it would be Lord of the Rings. Its triumph in garnering so many recent gaming awards is truly deserved.