The BEST 8 Bit Gaming Computer

[pocketmego]

It is worth noting that the poll isn't worded very well to represent the 8 Bit era. I think Atari would have more votes if it had said, "The Atari 8 bit home PC line"... or something to that effect. Putting the 400 as the only choice for Atari is like putting the Vic-20 as the only choice for Commodore. I'm not tearing on the original poster, as he has already admitted he didn't know about a lot of the other choices available. So the poll shows a BIAS toward the C=64... well... doesn't that kind of go along with my point?

 

 

It REALLY wasn't intended to show bias. That's why I included the Amstrad and the Spectrum. I was trying to cover the machines I thought most game-centric. Frankly, you can't knock the Apple 2's library too much. It had some pretty great original games and some games which played better on it than any other system.

 

 

The original 1 on 1 and Pinball Construction set play WAY better on the Apple then they did on the C64.

 

-Ray

[rockfistus]

How disappointing about Mr Kizza, I thought I'd really run into the Advanced Lawnmower Sim guy.......

 

Well, anyway here's my version. Professional Lawn Mower Simulator

 

http://gorevolt.com/Rocko/Games/ProLawnSim.rar

[rjchamp3]

I never owned any of these, accept I think i had a c64 and atari 400 once, before I got into videogames seriously.

 

I like c64

 

But you forgot atari st

[Matt_B]

I never owned any of these, accept I think i had a c64 and atari 400 once, before I got into videogames seriously.

 

I like c64

 

But you forgot atari st

 

The Atari ST is a 16/32-bit system, so it would be a very unfair comparison with the other machines.

 

That said, there are less games for it than there are for the C64 and Spectrum. Possibly even the Apple II as well...

Edited August 19, 2006 by Matt_B

[psj3809]

Yep you cant bring Atari ST into the argument as thats a whole different kettle of fish, over in England after the 8 bit C64 and Speccy it was then either the Amiga or Atari ST for most people.

 

I just love the fact that due to emulators i can try games on so many machines, many of which i never had and try so many different games. Sounds weird but i love some of the more 'basic' versions of big coin op hits, eg Commando i love on MAME but i love playing the Spectrum version as well, just amazes me how they get that programmed in 48k.

 

Some other other games i love are the more simple quick games as i dont have as much time for gaming as i used to, i love so many Atari VCS titles and enjoy trying new games for this system.

 

But best of all discovering a 'system' you never tried before, eg PC Engine or MSX, love finding new games for these systems.

[TwiliteZoner]

It really isn't fair comparing an Atari 8-Bit to a C64 considering everything had to be turned down a notch to run on the 400 and the 800.

 

If it wasn't for the 400 the quality would have been light years better. That being said, the quality was pretty darn good to begin with.

 

Can you imagine if all the C64 games had to also be made to run on a VIC-20. Scary huh....

[pocketmego]

It really isn't fair comparing an Atari 8-Bit to a C64 considering everything had to be turned down a notch to run on the 400 and the 800.

 

If it wasn't for the 400 the quality would have been light years better. That being said, the quality was pretty darn good to begin with.

 

Can you imagine if all the C64 games had to also be made to run on a VIC-20. Scary huh....

 

I am thrilled to see someone voted for the Amstrad. I know most of what it had on its system, gamewise, were mostly just Spectrum ports. But, the Amstrad had a good, solid graphics and I think is a very underated machine.

 

-Ray

[Matt_B]

I am thrilled to see someone voted for the Amstrad. I know most of what it had on its system, gamewise, were mostly just Spectrum ports. But, the Amstrad had a good, solid graphics and I think is a very underated machine.

 

-Ray

 

It certainly had a nice spec on paper. However, that didn't quite equate to gaming power because the Amstrad was underpowered in relation to the graphics capabilities. The problem isn't so much the CPU speed (it's actually slightly faster on the Amstrad at 4MHz vs 3.5MHz, although memory contention makes it a bit closer in practice) but the ratio of the size of the video RAM to what could be copied in a video frame. This made games that pushed the Spectrum to its limits very sluggish when ported over to the Amstrad and a lot ended up hacked-down rather than enhanced as a result.

 

That said, the Amstrad was great at isometric 3D games; using hardware page flipping where the Spectrum had to backbuffer graphics to avoid flicker, they could regain most of the lost speed. Almost all the Spectrum ports (e.g. Head Over Heels, Gunfright and Fairlight) enhanced the graphics using the 4-colour mode too, and many of the machine's best original games (e.g. Spindizzy and Get Dexter) used the format as well.

[MacbthPSW]

It really isn't fair comparing an Atari 8-Bit to a C64 considering everything had to be turned down a notch to run on the 400 and the 800.

 

Can you imagine if all the C64 games had to also be made to run on a VIC-20. Scary huh....

The C64 to VIC-20 comparison really isn't fair either though, since on most counts the VIC-20 is much weaker than even the Atari 400. The VIC only has 5k vs. 16k of RAM, it has no sprites at all, the sound chip is much weaker than the POKEY, horizontal resolution (default) is only 176 pixels - 88 in multi-colour mode... the VIC-20 really has nearly no software compatibility with the C-64, except the fact that it shares the same processor and same BASIC/Operating System.

[AussieAtari]

Bringing an obscure machine into the discussion, Congo Bongo on the Sega SC-3000 was pretty good. I don't know what the specifications were and it was limited to a few markets but I was pretty impressed with it at the time.

[Matt_B]

Bringing an obscure machine into the discussion, Congo Bongo on the Sega SC-3000 was pretty good. I don't know what the specifications were and it was limited to a few markets but I was pretty impressed with it at the time.

 

It looks like an OK machine by early 80s standards. The hardware is almost identical to the Coleco Adam with a Z80 CPU, a TMS9928A for the graphics and a SN76489A for sound. Swap the latter for a General Instruments AY-3-8190 and you've basically got the MSX1.

Edited August 22, 2006 by Matt_B

[Fröhn]

According to Wikipedia (EN), the C-64 games list just barely covers approx 1100.

Not exactly a reliable source for Apple ][ software either (As some clown posted earlier)

Considering that there are currently 18800 games listen on GameBase64 and I still have dozens of games here which are NOT listed in that 18800 games, I claim that the number of games is higher than 1100

[rockfistus]

Do you have Beanstalk? I've been searching for it for a loooong ass time.

[NightSprinter]

But best of all discovering a 'system' you never tried before, eg PC Engine or MSX, love finding new games for these systems.

 

YES, this is EXACTLY why I like emulators in some regards. I was able to find a surprisingly good port of "WonderBoy in The Dragon's Trap" for the TG16/PCE titled "Dragon's Curse". Not to mention "WonderBoy in Monster Land" on the Genesis.

 

But anyways, to go on subject I'd have to say there's no real "winner" in my eyes. Each game has its own strengths and weaknesses that makes each of their games unique. So I can't really vote for anything.

[pocketmego]

But best of all discovering a 'system' you never tried before, eg PC Engine or MSX, love finding new games for these systems.

 

YES, this is EXACTLY why I like emulators in some regards. I was able to find a surprisingly good port of "WonderBoy in The Dragon's Trap" for the TG16/PCE titled "Dragon's Curse". Not to mention "WonderBoy in Monster Land" on the Genesis.

 

But anyways, to go on subject I'd have to say there's no real "winner" in my eyes. Each game has its own strengths and weaknesses that makes each of their games unique. So I can't really vote for anything.

 

The poll is interesting so far. I am surprised that the Spectrum isn't much closer to the C64 than it is. Not that it is better or worse a game machine, but because it really was HUGE in a large part of the world and if you didn't own a C64 in those places chances are very likely you owned a Spectrum.

 

The Atari being very high doesn't surprise me either. I am happy to see people compensated for my goof by basically using the 400 I put in the pollo as a catch all for all of Atari's 8 bit machines.

 

The Atari 8 bits seemed to be right there with the C64 in terms of game variety and selection. It was always a shame that Atari had to suffer the crash and let it take both its gaming and computer development departments with it. Tramiel was trying to make the Atari computer line viable, but he was too much of a cheap-ass to ever do it right.

 

I would have loved to see the Atari computer division evolve beyond its console counterpart. The company might still be with us today.

 

-Ray

[TailChao]

All of the computers listed are really a blast (You can't have this kind of fun with modern PCs!)

I picked up an A800 a few years ago (MegaMania is quite fun, and is a good time waster), and a friend donated a Commodore 64. I have always wanted to own a speccy...

However,

 

I have always loved the Apple ][.

Even though I was born in 88', I got plenty of experience with 8-Bit computers (although I wish I could have seen them when they were "new"). The Apple ][e and ][gs were almost always in my house from what I can recall. And since my brother was making use of the ][gs for music work, I got to play with the ][e (Usually "Dragon Wars" although I didn't, have the slightest idea of what to do with the game) and the occasional 5 1/4 floppy "borrowed" from the public education system.

The Apple ][ series in general, are very fond to me, probably because I didn't get to play with a shiny new "multimedia" PC until ~95-96, and they were everywhere. My elementary school system had ][e's in every room, in junior high it was more disperse, but they were still there; so in a sense, there was a kind of aura to them, I could just sit down nearly anywhere and play games that I brought from home, or bring home software to use, etc. (Interestingly enough, most of these Apple ][e's would eventually work their way into my home after they were decomissioned from use)

Even after my own ][e had gone, I still had the ][gs and it's compatibility with the 8-bit library, and still have it today (albeit with many more upgrades). Although they Apple ]['s primarily "educational" library can't always compare with the A800, speccy, or C64's classics, The computer in general was fun for me, and I got to learn several wonderful things by playing in AppleBasic and reading the wonderful manuals (Which I really have to highlight, because modern PC manuals are terrible).

 

After all the A][ has given me, I have to give SOMETHING back to it...

[pocketmego]

All of the computers listed are really a blast (You can't have this kind of fun with modern PCs!)

I picked up an A800 a few years ago (MegaMania is quite fun, and is a good time waster), and a friend donated a Commodore 64. I have always wanted to own a speccy...

However,

 

I have always loved the Apple ][.

Even though I was born in 88', I got plenty of experience with 8-Bit computers (although I wish I could have seen them when they were "new"). The Apple ][e and ][gs were almost always in my house from what I can recall. And since my brother was making use of the ][gs for music work, I got to play with the ][e (Usually "Dragon Wars" although I didn't, have the slightest idea of what to do with the game) and the occasional 5 1/4 floppy "borrowed" from the public education system.

The Apple ][ series in general, are very fond to me, probably because I didn't get to play with a shiny new "multimedia" PC until ~95-96, and they were everywhere. My elementary school system had ][e's in every room, in junior high it was more disperse, but they were still there; so in a sense, there was a kind of aura to them, I could just sit down nearly anywhere and play games that I brought from home, or bring home software to use, etc. (Interestingly enough, most of these Apple ][e's would eventually work their way into my home after they were decomissioned from use)

Even after my own ][e had gone, I still had the ][gs and it's compatibility with the 8-bit library, and still have it today (albeit with many more upgrades). Although they Apple ]['s primarily "educational" library can't always compare with the A800, speccy, or C64's classics, The computer in general was fun for me, and I got to learn several wonderful things by playing in AppleBasic and reading the wonderful manuals (Which I really have to highlight, because modern PC manuals are terrible).

 

After all the A][ has given me, I have to give SOMETHING back to it...

 

I found what you said about modern PCs interesting. Obviously they are great. obviously everyone here is either using one or a mac (poor bastards), and we all have a lot of great uses for them. Especially with the internet which is the TRUE source of a PC's power. But, you are right. They aren't fun like the old 8 bits were.

 

There is just something universally appealing about sitting down, firing up your machine of choice, flipping through your Floppies or Cassetts and finding that perfect cheezey arcade port or awesome original title and just loosing yourself in those great games.

 

Classic 8 bit computer games could just draw you in as you had to add your imagination to the minimalistic or lack of graphics (infocom) to really bnecome part of the game. But, that is what really made it fun.

 

I sure miss the good ol' days.

 

-Ray

Edited August 24, 2006 by pocketmego

[AussieAtari]

TailChao & pocketmego - well said!

 

Thanks to AA & the many, many sites like it the Good Old Days are still here.

[pocketmego]

TailChao & pocketmego - well said!

 

Thanks to AA & the many, many sites like it the Good Old Days are still here.

 

Actually, you made me think of something Aussie. The one thing I love about the current good ol' days vs the ones that i actually grew up in, is that now I can access all sorts of different machines and most importantly i can talk about this stuff with all of you from all over the world. That ROCKS and its something that i can't say about when I was younger.

 

-Ray

[marcfrick2112]

Hmm, Although I used an Apple II first (in high school) once I played 'Mail order Monsters' on a friends' C-64, I HAD to have one. Today, I have 1 C-64 system, and two full C-128 systems. I still play with them about twice a week....

 

Oh, Paranoid:

 

What exactly can you not do with Beta that you can on VHS? I have about 1500 movies on Beta, special effects switchers, do custom animated title screens on my tapes, audio dubbing, and my best machine has variable-speed slow motion and playback, and basically does everything but make coffee....

 

Only drawback is having to mail-order blank tapes

[JamesD]

Well, of the systems listed I'd have to say the C64 overall but to be honest, it really depended on the game.

 

For some types of games sprites are almost required and the C64's are flat out better than the Atari Player Missile system because no memory moves are required to move an object up and down. Just left and right and it doesn't matter. MSX and other Z80 machines with sprites do ok as does a Ti99. The Ti99's CPU was slow though since the architecture wasn't really designed for it. The Amstrad 6128 Plus was probably the best Z80 machine hardware wise and even had DMA to drive the sound chip.

 

The Atari has more colors so between that and the coprocessor it's possible to make some really great looking screens that make the machine appear to support more colors in a gfx mode than it does. But the more of this stuff you do the slower it becomes because clock cycles are taken away from the CPU to do it. Same goes for sprites on the C64.

The absolute worst culprit at that is anything with a Z80. MSX and CPC machines suffer a bigger penalty for the stolen clock cycles than the 6502 with cpu clock cycles times a minimum of 4 cycle intervals on the 6128 Plus.

 

As for sound, more channels vs analog filters vs more machines with the same chip. The Atari has more sound channes which is better for music but you can multiplex channels for more on the other chips so it's not such a big deal. The analog filters on the SID give it the most control of ANY of these old chips... but game developers turned out the same boinky warbling crap anyway. The General Instruments AY chip turns out as good of sound as the Atari but with 1 less channel. Speaker toggling on the Apple II and earlier Speccys sucks and who wants to spend as much on a sound board as one of the other machines? The Mockingboard wasn't cheap!

 

Speccy? Uh, no... strictly low end and doesn't benchmark anywhere near the other machines. And the 6502 is way faster for moving bitmapped graphics around. I've programmed in assembly on the 6502 and Z80... no comparison speed wise for this sort of thing. However, I could probably finish a Z80 program quicker. I posted a sort routine on the Speccy forums last night and it didn't take long to modify the original routine it was based on. 15 minutes or less and I haven't touched Z80 assembler in years. In 6502 it would take much longer to get it right unless I spent a lot more time on the 6502.

 

The Speccy does have some cool games you won't find anywhere else and a very large game catalog.

 

The Oric wasn't the best gamer but it also had some unique titles that were pretty cool and available on no other platform. It's odd display layout made action games a bit of a challenge but more static graphics could be pretty good.

 

The C116, C16 and Plus/4 were somewhere between the Speccy and the C64/Atari as far as capability and were 75% faster than the C64. Pretty good as a competitor to the Speccy but much more limited as far as custom audio/gfx hardware goes than Atari or C64. In recent years several C64 games have been hacked to run on the system and even SID music has been emulated on the built in TED sound. Not as good but pretty impressive anyway.

 

I learned to program the 6502 on an Apple II. The screen memory map is evil and the color generation method (artifacting) sucks. You can do quite a bit with it anyway but it really limits what kind of games you can implement or how good they will be. A really large number of games helps it out though. It works pretty well for games that have static text or minimal motion like RPGs or simulations. One arcade game Space Eggs took advantage of it's color generation quirks to make the bad guys change colors as they moved. The Atari version just didn't have the same feel. There were several of the Sirius titles that were excellent. Other games took advantage of the Apple Pascal's ability to swap subroutines in and out of memory making it possible to have very large games in a small memory footprint. Something I didn't see on any other 8 bit system. The IIc+ was also the fastest 6502 system short of aftermarket 65816 upgrades. I have one and it's pretty fast for the time.

 

The Atari fans love to bring up the clock speed difference between it and the C64 but in an old Compute Magazine they benchmarked the two in assembly and the C64 was the faster of the two there. Both beat the Speccy by a wide margin and the BBC micro was the fastest of the machines tested. However... I haven't been able to track down the magazine the original benchmarks came from so I don't know if they were flawed. If any Basic was involved the Atari's lack of integers in it's Basic really slow it down.

 

Now, I personally had a TRS-80 Color Computer and thanks to color artifacting (similar to the Apple) it could do pretty well. I've heard 4 channel music generated through it's built in DAC that is pretty good. Way better than Apple/Speccy speaker clicks but not like a sound chip either. It's 6809 CPU stomps the 6502 and Z80... don't even argue that. It didn't receive as much game development as the Apple II or Speccy but I'd classify it's games as similar in quality and the same resolution as the Speccy. Games like Time Bandit originated on the CoCo and made it to the 16 bit systems later.

 

The Color Computer 3 however was a totally different beast. 320x225 resolution with 16 colors from a pallette of 64 colors. 640x225x2 max resolution. You could change color pallette registers for color cycling, for placing more colors on screen at once, etc... It had built in hardware for horizontal scolling games so you just change the scoll register to move the screen. No sprites but with it's high CPU speed mode enabled the 6809 can drive over 8 sprites with masking just in software. Some people have managed 16 software sprites which is pretty impressive. The best version of Pac Man I've ever seen on an 8 bit computer is on the CoCo3 and Crash, Crumble, Stomp looks almost like the arcade. The Speech and Sound Pak added an AY sound chip, speech chip and a PIC microcontroller to drive them independantly of the main CPU so a music track doesn't have to steal as much CPU time as any other 8 bit. A common upgrade is the 6309 CPU which is even faster than the 6809. It's kinda like what the 65816 is to the 6502 or 64180 is to the Z80. Sadly Tandy's attitude of protecting their PC line pretty much sealed the fate of one of the best 8 bit game systems ever made. Better hardware, not many games.

 

The Apple IIgs was also an excellent system but it was a later design than the others so that's no surprise. No sprites but a 2MHz 65816 gave it similar capabilities for software sprites as the CoCo3. It had the best built in music/sound of any 8 bit machine. The new graphics modes did away with the old evil graphics memory map and color by artifacting. It had 4096 colors, color cycling, etc... and ran most older Apple II stuff. But you could buy a C64, Atari 130XE and Color Computer 3 for less than what it cost by the time it was released. I picked a nice complete one up off of ebay for $12 + shipping last month. That's less than most C64's go for.

[Spector]

I think between the Spectrum and C64, it really depends on what you want most from games. I like a bit of what they are both best at, so it's hard to say. Shooters are better on the C64, and of course, overall it was technically better, but the C64 was let down by a high-colour, low res display that completely lacked character and atmosphere. Best to play both, really.

[MacbthPSW]

but the C64 was let down by a high-colour, low res display that completely lacked character and atmosphere.

This is often cited, I suppose by people who don't realize the C64 could also do the low-colour, hi res display too, complete with colour clash and all that. It's just that the game designers/artists/programmers chose to go with the extra colours.

 

Yes, it ends up being a matter of preference for the player which style they prefer, but it's not a technical consideration. The C64 could both do Speccy style graphics *and* the higher-colour, lower-res graphics. In fact, the C64 is even capable of using the hi-res and multi-colour gfx on the same horizontal row, at the expense of only having 8 instead of 16 colour choices.

[Spector]

but the C64 was let down by a high-colour, low res display that completely lacked character and atmosphere.

This is often cited, I suppose by people who don't realize the C64 could also do the low-colour, hi res display too, complete with colour clash and all that. It's just that the game designers/artists/programmers chose to go with the extra colours.

 

Yes, it ends up being a matter of preference for the player which style they prefer, but it's not a technical consideration. The C64 could both do Speccy style graphics *and* the higher-colour, lower-res graphics. In fact, the C64 is even capable of using the hi-res and multi-colour gfx on the same horizontal row, at the expense of only having 8 instead of 16 colour choices.

 

Yeah I know the C64 could do the low-colour thing too, but usually they went for the hi-colour display instead because it looks better in screenshots. It doesn't look so hot when you actually see it on a TV screen though. Also, the Spectrum's display looks slightly different to the C64's high res one on a telly, and it looks better in my opinion. For a lot of games, the high colour mode is best, but for the longer, deeper games that were a major part of the 80s computer scene, the C64's graphics don't draw you in the way the Spectrum's cool monochrome can.

[pocketmego]

This was a great post, thanks for the thurough and very enlightening run-down of various machines of the era. Good Job!

 

-Ray

 

 

Well, of the systems listed I'd have to say the C64 overall but to be honest, it really depended on the game.

 

For some types of games sprites are almost required and the C64's are flat out better than the Atari Player Missile system because no memory moves are required to move an object up and down. Just left and right and it doesn't matter. MSX and other Z80 machines with sprites do ok as does a Ti99. The Ti99's CPU was slow though since the architecture wasn't really designed for it. The Amstrad 6128 Plus was probably the best Z80 machine hardware wise and even had DMA to drive the sound chip.

 

The Atari has more colors so between that and the coprocessor it's possible to make some really great looking screens that make the machine appear to support more colors in a gfx mode than it does. But the more of this stuff you do the slower it becomes because clock cycles are taken away from the CPU to do it. Same goes for sprites on the C64.

The absolute worst culprit at that is anything with a Z80. MSX and CPC machines suffer a bigger penalty for the stolen clock cycles than the 6502 with cpu clock cycles times a minimum of 4 cycle intervals on the 6128 Plus.

 

As for sound, more channels vs analog filters vs more machines with the same chip. The Atari has more sound channes which is better for music but you can multiplex channels for more on the other chips so it's not such a big deal. The analog filters on the SID give it the most control of ANY of these old chips... but game developers turned out the same boinky warbling crap anyway. The General Instruments AY chip turns out as good of sound as the Atari but with 1 less channel. Speaker toggling on the Apple II and earlier Speccys sucks and who wants to spend as much on a sound board as one of the other machines? The Mockingboard wasn't cheap!

 

Speccy? Uh, no... strictly low end and doesn't benchmark anywhere near the other machines. And the 6502 is way faster for moving bitmapped graphics around. I've programmed in assembly on the 6502 and Z80... no comparison speed wise for this sort of thing. However, I could probably finish a Z80 program quicker. I posted a sort routine on the Speccy forums last night and it didn't take long to modify the original routine it was based on. 15 minutes or less and I haven't touched Z80 assembler in years. In 6502 it would take much longer to get it right unless I spent a lot more time on the 6502.

 

The Speccy does have some cool games you won't find anywhere else and a very large game catalog.

 

The Oric wasn't the best gamer but it also had some unique titles that were pretty cool and available on no other platform. It's odd display layout made action games a bit of a challenge but more static graphics could be pretty good.

 

The C116, C16 and Plus/4 were somewhere between the Speccy and the C64/Atari as far as capability and were 75% faster than the C64. Pretty good as a competitor to the Speccy but much more limited as far as custom audio/gfx hardware goes than Atari or C64. In recent years several C64 games have been hacked to run on the system and even SID music has been emulated on the built in TED sound. Not as good but pretty impressive anyway.

 

I learned to program the 6502 on an Apple II. The screen memory map is evil and the color generation method (artifacting) sucks. You can do quite a bit with it anyway but it really limits what kind of games you can implement or how good they will be. A really large number of games helps it out though. It works pretty well for games that have static text or minimal motion like RPGs or simulations. One arcade game Space Eggs took advantage of it's color generation quirks to make the bad guys change colors as they moved. The Atari version just didn't have the same feel. There were several of the Sirius titles that were excellent. Other games took advantage of the Apple Pascal's ability to swap subroutines in and out of memory making it possible to have very large games in a small memory footprint. Something I didn't see on any other 8 bit system. The IIc+ was also the fastest 6502 system short of aftermarket 65816 upgrades. I have one and it's pretty fast for the time.

 

The Atari fans love to bring up the clock speed difference between it and the C64 but in an old Compute Magazine they benchmarked the two in assembly and the C64 was the faster of the two there. Both beat the Speccy by a wide margin and the BBC micro was the fastest of the machines tested. However... I haven't been able to track down the magazine the original benchmarks came from so I don't know if they were flawed. If any Basic was involved the Atari's lack of integers in it's Basic really slow it down.

 

Now, I personally had a TRS-80 Color Computer and thanks to color artifacting (similar to the Apple) it could do pretty well. I've heard 4 channel music generated through it's built in DAC that is pretty good. Way better than Apple/Speccy speaker clicks but not like a sound chip either. It's 6809 CPU stomps the 6502 and Z80... don't even argue that. It didn't receive as much game development as the Apple II or Speccy but I'd classify it's games as similar in quality and the same resolution as the Speccy. Games like Time Bandit originated on the CoCo and made it to the 16 bit systems later.

 

The Color Computer 3 however was a totally different beast. 320x225 resolution with 16 colors from a pallette of 64 colors. 640x225x2 max resolution. You could change color pallette registers for color cycling, for placing more colors on screen at once, etc... It had built in hardware for horizontal scolling games so you just change the scoll register to move the screen. No sprites but with it's high CPU speed mode enabled the 6809 can drive over 8 sprites with masking just in software. Some people have managed 16 software sprites which is pretty impressive. The best version of Pac Man I've ever seen on an 8 bit computer is on the CoCo3 and Crash, Crumble, Stomp looks almost like the arcade. The Speech and Sound Pak added an AY sound chip, speech chip and a PIC microcontroller to drive them independantly of the main CPU so a music track doesn't have to steal as much CPU time as any other 8 bit. A common upgrade is the 6309 CPU which is even faster than the 6809. It's kinda like what the 65816 is to the 6502 or 64180 is to the Z80. Sadly Tandy's attitude of protecting their PC line pretty much sealed the fate of one of the best 8 bit game systems ever made. Better hardware, not many games.

 

The Apple IIgs was also an excellent system but it was a later design than the others so that's no surprise. No sprites but a 2MHz 65816 gave it similar capabilities for software sprites as the CoCo3. It had the best built in music/sound of any 8 bit machine. The new graphics modes did away with the old evil graphics memory map and color by artifacting. It had 4096 colors, color cycling, etc... and ran most older Apple II stuff. But you could buy a C64, Atari 130XE and Color Computer 3 for less than what it cost by the time it was released. I picked a nice complete one up off of ebay for $12 + shipping last month. That's less than most C64's go for.