[geoelectric]

I learned assembly on a 6809 (TRS-80 CoCo) platform. It was only later that I really appreciated how cool of a CPU it really was.

It’s a shame that Tandy missed the boat on including coprocessors for game support in their computers, especially that one. If they’d just included decent audio and maybe something for sprite management it would’ve been highly competitive.

[musicale]

Apple II had primitive graphics and sound, but was incredibly successful.

Atari 800 featured powerful video processing with display lists and sprites, 4-channel audio, etc., but was much less successful.

As I understand it, Radio Shack did not encourage third-party software and support for its systems, not realizing that it was the key to success.

OS-9, originally a 6809 OS, seems to have survived for quite some time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9

[geoelectric]

Yeah, once OS-9 came out we got some decent game ports too. That’s where I discovered Epyx Rogue! It was very late in the lifespan of the system though.

C64/128 was what I was thinking of more than anything re 8-bit competition, keeping in mind I’m talking mid-late 80s by this point. I do also remember Atari 800 (and later) doing considerably better than you imply. But you’re right, Apple captured the early-mid 80s gaming market nicely.