As an aside, I find it entirely plausible that these restrictions are, if not designed for, at least desired in the design. As they make the work of a compiler

As an aside, I find it entirely plausible that these restrictions are, if not designed for, at least desired in the design. As they make the work of a compiler harder, they promote coding in assembly to get faster code. This, on the other hand, leads to lower code quality (as avoiding gotchas and dealing with corner cases correctly is a lot easier even in c than in assembly), which creates more "drama", which is good for gameplay.