How 8-bit games were actually made

Just read a new great book on the topic - Bob Pape's 'It's Behind You', about ZX Spectrum conversion of R-Type (one of the best games on the platform) that he handled back in 1988. A great insight both into tech side of things and in how daily life of a game programmer was like back then. I also seen similar stories in old magazine articles and in modern interviews or forum posts from old timers, and I think it would be great if more people who are insterested in homebrew for old consoles would know about these. Like, to know the roots, and to understand how much better the same things (tools, information) for us are now.

Here are few links that comes to mind for a start. I prefer to post only things that are free, i.e. easy to obtain.

It's Behind You - the book I already mentioned. Tells the story behind ZX Spectrum port of R-Type, the whole porting process, also mentions some other home versions of the game and people behind them.
Duty Cycle Generator - a great series of blog posts from Neil Baldwin about his work on NES games at Eurocom as a music composer.
Progamming M.C. Kids - a highly technical article from 1992 on how the NES game was made.

There are some other great books that are not free too, like Mechner's 'Making of Prince of Persia' (read it when it used to be free).

I've read Neil's blog posts and the M.C. Kids post earlier. Never heard of "It's behind you" though. Nice find.
I like how his design "document" for porting an arcade game essentially was notes he had dictated on a tape recorder while playing the original at a nearby arcade for an hour or so.

Wow, "It's Behind You" was a great read! Well written and exciting to the end. And even though you already know the unromantic side of game development in those "good old days", it's still painful to read about how the disappointments line up for the people in the game developer sweatshop.

Speaking of "Making of Prince of Persia" (which I have yet to read), I just finished reading "The making of Karateka", as it was included in the Humble Bundle for Android. While that documents a computer game market 5 years earlier and for someone living under very different conditions, I can't help but read into it the same old rule: re-creating someone else's IP might pay you the bills (or in Bob Pape's case, hardly even that...) and give you some instant recognition, but any potential success of your hard work will ultimately be of limited benefit to yourself.

Something to think about in those ongoing discussion of whether to make your next homebrew a "homage" or an original...