Prince of Persia has become the basis for a long-running franchise, including a 2010 live-action film released by Walt Disney Pictures and an ongoing series of video games published by Ubisoft.

[8][9] In 1993, Mechner founded Smoking Car Productions to design and direct the adventure game The Last Express.

While commercially unprofitable at the time of its release, the game has garnered a cult following and is recognized as an innovative work in interactive narrative.

[10][11][12][13][14][15] As an author, Mechner has written graphic novels in collaboration with different illustrators, including the New York Times bestseller Templar (2013), Monte Cristo (2022), and Liberty (2023).

Mechner then spent two years at Yale writing his first published game, Karateka (1984), which went to number one on the Billboard software chart.

The game cuts between gameplay and what is happening out of the player's view, showing actions of the imprisoned princess and her captor.

He wrote both games in the 6502 assembly language for the Apple II, though that system was in decline through the late 1980s, and little new software was released by 1989.

[27] Smoking Car grew to sixty people, a huge team for the mid-1990s, and the game took longer to finish than anticipated.

Developed at Ubisoft Montreal with Mechner as game designer, writer, and creative consultant, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was released in 2003.

[33] In 2024, Ubisoft released Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a new relaunch of the franchise, developed at its Montpellier studio.

He has published two volumes of his game development journals from the 1980s, one describing the making of Karateka and the other focusing on Prince of Persia.