At the time of its release, Prince of Persia had state of the art graphics and looked great, including beautiful animations that I bet to this day look good. The fluid movement was pretty necessary, because it was a seriously unforgiving game, and most of us played using our keyboards. I think I made it to level 2 once, and spent most of my time playing stuck in the dungeon first level. Pinpoint jumps, difficult sword fights, superfast instant death - this was Prince of Persia for MS DOS. 

I spent a lot of time playing this, resulting in enormous frustration But the life-like animations enthralled me, and I kept trying to get through this game. Like I said, a lot of us played with our keyboards, and now that I think back on it, I'm amazed we used such crappy input devices for such an unforgiving game. It's like playing Dark Souls with your foot. 

Still, it is a legendary game, and it spawned a whole franchise and even a movie. I've played other games in the series, and they weren't bad. But these days, this game is pretty darn near forgotten about along with a lot of other games in the MS DOS pantheon.