Reply 20 of 37, by Great Hierophant
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The Sierra AGI Apple II ports do not require a 65C02, and I do not know of any games that require it to use the Double High-Resolution Mode of the Apple IIe/IIc. It only would speed up software that used it. The Double High-Resolution Mode and 128K were introduced in the Apple IIe, before the Apple IIc or Enhanced Apple IIe were released.
The PCjr. is slower than an IBM PC because it shares memory between the CPU and the Video controller. While the Tandy shares memory, it is dual ported so the speed hit is not present.
The IBM PC/XT use an 8-bit memory and input/output bus, so whatever speed improvements are internal to the processor, and the 6502 can execute instructions in far fewer clock cycles, so it isn't a cut and dried comparison.
The AGI ports for the Amiga and the Atari ST sound similar to the PCs using the Tandy sound chip, so I would rather say that the systems were not utilized to their full potential. The ports for the Apple IIgs sounded far superior to the PC or Tandy.
Sierra probably focused on the Apple IIs because there were millions of them in schools. Most companies ported their titles to the system well into the late 1980s.
Actually, the introduction of VGA in 1987 and the Adlib and MT-32 in 1988 put the PC on par or better with the C64 or Amiga. Took software a while to fully take advantage of this.
Virtually no US publisher fully embraced either the ST or Amiga. The allure of the "IBM PC Compatible" label, which these machines could not use, drove customers away. Business, school work and then games were the priorities.
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