18 Jun
2007
18 Jun
'07
8:29 a.m.
Sure. I think the 6502 was heavily favored by Atari
(for obvious
reasons) and not many other vendors.
Atari actually had a good mixture of CPU's, though there was a sort period
(very early 80's) where they moved to 6502 reliance (some of it coming
out of their PCS development in the late 70's, which was initially
intended to be simultaniously designed for arcade use but never panned out
because of different display issue needs. The only thing that made the
leap out of that was the 6502 and their custom POKEY chip. The closest
hardware to the PCS's was Missile Command and Centipede).
For a sampling:
Quiz Show (1976) used an S2650 CPU.
Tank 8 (1976 and the first color game), Destroyer (1977), Drag Race
(1977), Pool Shark (1977), Sprint 8 (1977), Super Bug (1977), Triple
Hunt (1977), Sky Diver (1978), Fire Truck (1978), Orbit (1978), Smokey Joe
(1978), and Monte Carlo (1980) all used the 6800.
Arabian (1983) and Kangaroo (1982) used Z80's.
I, Robot (1983 - the first 3D/Polygonal game) used a 6809 with supporting
2901 bit slice cpu's for graphics support. The color vector Star Wars
also used the 6809.
System 1 games (starting in 1984 with Marble Madness) ushered in the 68000
series era, though the System 2 (also in 1984 with 720 and Paperboy) used
T11's.
Marty
The 6809 (Defender, et al.) was,
I think, more popular; but I agree, the Z-80 was exceedingly popular.
It was powerful, inexpensive, and there were lots of folks with lots
of experience to make code that performed well. There were plenty of
8080-based games in the black-and-white era, as well - those were the
vendors that moved up to the Z-80 later.
-ethan