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Comment by jasonlotito | Hacker News Reader

Just for reference, these are two books that were from the journal of Jordan Mechner written while writing Prince of Persia and Karateka. They are enjoyable reads, and I highly recommend them.

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Karateka-Journals-1982-1985...

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I started reading "Making of Prince of Persia" recently and it is amazingly inspiring because it captures his real thoughts as he was making it, unlike autobiographies where hindsight distorts things, no matter how real the author wants it to be. I second the recommendation.

I really enjoyed the Prince of Persia one. It's relatively lacking (though not totally) in terms of the coding side of things but there's a really good story and sense of what it took to push a complete game out of the door at the time.

Karateka is different, as it's about writing a game in your spare time (really simplifying things). You realize how much time he spent writing it, how often he would be close to finishing, only to have a lot more work to do.

If you enjoyed PoP, you'll like Kareteka.

Jordan Mechner did a great interview where he talks about Kareteka and coding for the Apple II vs iOS.

http://www.imore.com/debug-7-jordan-mechner-and-karateka

Thanks, I'll give it a go. I think I got the Karateka book in some bundle that was on sale recently. The only reason I didn't jump on it yet was because I'm not/wasn't familiar with the game.

Do they look good on Kindle, or is the physical book vastly better?

I've read the PoP journals many times on Kindle, and it looks great. Can't speak to the Karateka journal, but I imagine it's not far off.

I don't have the physical one, but I can't imagine what I could be missing out. If anything, you can keep reading it on your phone if you don't have your e-book with you etc.

Sometimes books with diagrams, pictures, source code, look bad on an e-book.

Wow! they jumped to the top reading list.

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