Name: The Making of Karateka
ISBN: 9781480297234

The Making of Karateka

In 1982 -- the era of Apple II and Commodore 64 -- 17-year-old college freshman and aspiring game designer Jordan Mechner began keeping a private journal. This first volume is a candid account of the personal, creative and technical struggles that led to his breakthrough success with Karateka, which topped bestseller charts in 1985, and planted the seeds of his next game, Prince of Persia.

What Hacker News says

namenumberJun 2026

If anybody wants to see how that entire creative process went, there's a "game" called "The Making of Karateka" on Steam that is a nice interactive experience telling the story of Jordan Mechner's start in the games industry and how Karateka came to be.

It's a fun media experience with a lot of playable prototypes.

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qmrSep 2025

Jordan's books "The Making of Karateka" and "The Making of Prince of Persia" are delightful stream of consciousness journals of his time working on these early pioneering titles and are a fascinating look into the history of the personal computer and computer gaming revolutions.

Full of his hopes, thoughts, fears, struggles, aspirations, setbacks, and successes. Old sketches and screen captures. Just reading about his workflow for the animation on Prince of Persia is fascinating.

Jordan has a way with storytelling.

https://x.com/jmechner/status/1831585901350158436

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dejvJun 2019

I love that book as well as Making of Karateka (his previous game), I read both books for 5 times and each time when I started to have doubts about my decision to be indie developer (not doing games anymore) and when I started to think about finding a job after almost two decades without any success it did renew my energy to continue.

The book for me is about spirit of working on your own projects, about curiosity and passion on whatever you choose to pursuit.

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PeterisSep 2018

I'm going to take a very different stance here from others.

First, you should ask yourself - what kind of engineer do you want to be. Why are you building?

Then, read about the people who became the best and their early days. What did they do when they were in your position? Did they study a set of topics or did they pursue their passions? Taking and highly-weighing advice from people not at the top of the field could be very detrimental to your development as an engineer.

From reading books like: Coders at work, Masters of Doom, Making of Karateka, you will realize that the best engineers were driven by their ideas and projects very early on. They ended up learning to make things happen. But don't take my word for it, find these people, study their stories and pick the path you would enjoy the most.

This approach will not just make you a strong career engineer, but could turn you into one of the greats - the people that get to push the field forward.

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jacobkgAug 2018

Jordan Mechner published his journals from the period when he made Karateka and Prince of Persia. I found them to be very inspirational.

The Making of Karateka https://www.amazon.com/dp/1480297232/

The Making of Prince of Persia https://www.amazon.com/dp/1468093657/

I recommend reading them in order.

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dejvAug 2018

The book is awesome, make sure to read also Making of Karateka, about his previous game.

I read both books 4 or 5 times, basically once a year everytime I start having doubts about being indie (non-game) developer.

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