As the deadlines began to approach for creating an E3 demo, the JADE rendering engine was removed from the game. It was replaced by a 3D rendering engine created by members of Ubisoft's Shanghai, China, design studio. Almost immediately the team began seeing results. The game was running faster, and, most importantly, the visuals were improving, thanks to effects like in-game fog and streams of light in the environment.

Still, as the team prepared the E3 demo--which would feature a polished selection of a few game levels--no one knew how the game was going to be received. Mechner, a veteran of many E3s, says he told the team that they were in good shape. "I kept saying 'Your work is top quality,'" he says. "But I don't think anyone on the team emotionally believed what I was telling them."

In a way, the team pessimism was understandable. Given the young age of the team members and their history of projects, no one was expecting to have hordes of people playing their demo at E3. The members of the Montreal team were used to practically being ignored at the show. "The only guys who came to our booth before," explains animator Drouin, "were the people looking for somewhere to rest, because there was a place to sit down near the Donald Duck game."

Arriving at E3, David Chateauneuf is visibly shocked at the size of the Prince of Persia booth.

But as soon as the team arrived in Los Angeles for E3, everyone began to realize that things might be different this year. "I went to E3 expecting we were going to have this little stand in the back," remembers Richard Dumas. "Then I walked into the booth and saw we had a whole section for Prince of Persia." Even better, there were Prince of Persia booth babes. Things were definitely looking up.

Once the show opened, the news only got better. The team, dressed in red Ubisoft shirts, eagerly waited at the booth to see early reactions. The hours leading up to E3 had been long, and team members were looking for some kind of validation. They got it in spades. By the end of the first day, the Prince of Persia section of the booth was filled up with dozens of onlookers who were elbowing each other for a chance to play the game. "I remember turning to Patrice at one point and saying, 'Is it always like this at E3?'" remembers Dumas. "And he just said to me, 'No way man. It has never been like this before. It's so awesome!'"

The team celebrates their success after the first day of E3.

Equally awesome was the praise lavished on the game at the end of the show. As E3 closed, both online Web sites and print magazines were whispering that Prince of Persia was perhaps one of the most impressive games at the show, mostly because of its lush graphics, unique gameplay, and excellent control. A few weeks after the show, the buzz was replaced by awards. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was named The Best Action/Adventure Game of the Year by the E3 Game Critics Awards. In 2002, the award was given to Splinter Cell, another Ubisoft title that went on to become one of 2002's best-selling games.

After returning to Montreal, Mallat gave the entire team the week off after E3 to celebrate their success. But upon returning from vacation the mood suddenly became more somber. "We came back, and I told the assembled team, 'OK, we have a good demo...and that's all we have right now,'" he says. Mallat didn't want to be the bearer of bad news, but the simple fact was that Ubisoft was expecting the game to be on store shelves by November, only six months away. No one on the team thought that release date was realistic. "I basically realized after E3 there was no way we could finish the game this year, and we'd have to slip it to 2004," explains Mechner.

But that, it turns out, was not going to be an option. All of the sudden the success of E3 would be replaced by what Mechner calls "the darkest hours" on the project. "It was a make-or-break moment. The whole game could have easily come crashing down."