was a style similar to Mechner's rotoscoping technique for the original Prince of Persia titles. The game used the third-party NetImmerse game engine, with character animation and AI behaviour handled by Motion Factory's Motivate middleware system. The team considered creating their own game engine during early production, but settled on third-party software so they could focus on game development. NetImmerse was used to manage polygon models and particle effects, while Motivate was used for animation development. Other actions and elements were otherwise handled by the in-house programming team. The engine's versatility allowed the developers to create both indoor and outdoor environments without many restrictions. Further graphical elements included warping polygon models to allow actions such as the Prince's breathing to be visible. Several different graphical options were supported, and 3D acceleration was a requirement for the title. The music was co-composed by Jonelle Adkisson and Greg Rahn. Release Prince of Persia 3D was announced by Broderbund on 15 April 1998, planned for a release in "early 1999". It was later shown off at that year's E3. As part of the promotion, a developer's blog was originally operated on the game's website, although due to workload the blog was not greatly expanded. The game released on 17 September 1999. This version was released for Microsoft Windows. Multiple patches were released for the game over the following weeks, focusing on fixing reported bugs. In April 2000, a port of Prince of Persia 3D for the Dreamcast was announced, developed by Avalanche Software and published by Mattel Interactive. For the port, the game was retitled Prince of Persia: Arabian Nights. The port was released in North America on 21 November 2000. A port was also being developed for the PlayStation, based on the PC version and featuring gameplay alterations to appeal to fans of action games. The PlayStation port was cancelled so staff could focus on the Dreamcast port. Reception The Dreamcast version received "mixed" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In retrospective opinions from Mechner and game journalists, Prince of Persia 3D is considered one of the weakest titles in the series and a key reason for a growing lack of interest from the gaming community. IGN praised the PC version's unique score, fluid animations and well made graphics, and the jumping mechanics. GameSpot criticised the same version's rough character models, difficult camera effects, and unresponsive controls, but praised the