One of my favorite Apple II games EVER was called Karateka which was single handily programmed by an 18 year old chap named Jordan Mechner. In the years following Karateka, Mechner moved out to San Franciso and spent the next 3 years working on his next master piece called Prince of Persia for the Apple II. I stumbled upon his web site recently and found that he has transcribed his early journals from that period and it is just completely fascinating. The most interesting part of this journal for me was the development of the game including actual video footage of test demos during the various phases and the original video of his younger brother doing the prince movies that he later digitizes.
And here they are!
My ramblings follow...
* He really didn't devote his 100% full time to this project until the last year. He was very interested in writing screen plays since that's what his degree was in. He wrote Karateka while he was in college as a side project.
* He makes references to lots of world events both directly and indirectly. Examples: The 1987 stock market crash, The Tiananmen Square incident, Steve Job's creation of NEXT
* You can see how the Apple II is dying around 1988 and the publisher that he works for is getting nervous that he will miss the boat by delivering the game too late.
Mechner's journal is a fascinating read. He is an obvious kindred spirit of yours! (And maybe even you in a parallel universe).
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