No, that wasn’t really true during the third and fourth generations (NES, SNES). Other consoles contemporary to the NES also used 8-bit processors. The definiti

No, that wasn’t really true during the third and fourth generations (NES, SNES). Other consoles contemporary to the NES also used 8-bit processors. The definition of 8-bit depends on how you look at it, but I think we can agree that the Z80 is pretty similar to a 6502. The SNES and Genesis continued the trend. You took a decent but cheap processor (65C816 or 68000), made a custom chip to draw sprites on the screen, and paired the whole thing with a dedicated processor to handle audio. You might call the 68000 a “32-bit processor” but however you label it, it’s not so different from a 65C816 which both have 16-bit ALUs and 24-bit address busses. It wasn’t until later that we got people adding MORE CHIPS to make it go MORE FAST, and Nintendo stepping back from the race. I did a homebrew project for the NES and before I started, I spent a long time sitting down analyzing how these consoles worked so I could choose the console I liked. The 6502 and Z80, despite their design differences and different clock speeds, end up being fairly similar in terms of performance (although I think the SMS is slightly faster).