I enjoyed both Master of Doom and the two Mechner books (for Karateka and PoP). Can anyone suggest similar long-form blogs or books where a single developer talks about a programming journey they took? (Nat Friedman - Ximian - had a great blog 2002-2006ish of this nature, but it has since gone down.)
I can recommend Stay Awhile and Listen by David L. Craddock which tells the story of how the original Diablo was made. It's mostly told in interviews, so while it's not a single developer's story a lot of it is first hand.
You should definitely check out Bob Pape's book about the spectrum version of Rtype (and Rampage)
Totally agree, also The making of Karateka is worth a read
I hope he will publish third book about development of The Last Express.
I'm definitely getting it if he does. For others, I never played Karateka (got the retro iOS version a while ago) but the book stands on its own without having played any of the involved games (of course, having lived through it helps, so you know what games in those days involved)