This series is fascinating. Loads of stories about weird hacks to make the graphics cleaner, to up the polygon count, to make the animation more cartoonish, writing a dialect of Lisp to define the gameplay.

Related: an article about making Ratchet and Clank using some Jak and Daxter rendering code which Naughty Dog basically gave Insomniac for free. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2842/postmortem_insomn...

Another great series: Jordan Mechner's diary about making the original Prince of Persia.

http://jordanmechner.com/category/old-journals/