Gen 3 Consoles: NES w/ chips, SMS, A7800, GB, GG (besides the color palette)

Commodore 64 & 128 in backwards compatibility (BC) mode (1982/1985)

​Well here we are, the best selling PC of the '80s and one of the best selling worldwide even since then, up until the 2010s when the iMac and Raspberry Pi seem to have outsold it (don't quote me on that though, it's surprisingly not easy to find good numbers on more recent PC sales). This meant good, long-lived developer support (though not from Japan sadly but there were still good ports) and a big difference between most early and late games. The C64 features hardware scrolling and sprites, a similar standard resolution as the NES and SMS, and can typically display 16 colors at once (comparable to most NES games) from a humble palette of 16 colors. This is if multi-color mode is used, which makes each pixel twice as wide but lets you place 4 colors per 8x8 pixel tile. The smaller color palette is the main weakness visually for 2D games, as action games do tend to run smoothly while having about as many sprites on screen at once as the aforementioned consoles (while the NES and SMS support more hardware sprites, the tiles are smaller so each one is actually made up of several sprite tiles - 4 for small Mario in SMB1), and sometimes also featured animation more on par with the next generation such as in the late Wrath of the Demon. In some cases like Armalyte and Enforcer, it actually seems to do better than the consoles when it comes to slowdown and flicker which is quite impressive for a 1982 machine. For still images, colors can be changed per horizontal line as well - it wasn't used in-game however since it was a big load on the CPU. For 3D games, the CPU seems to be the main bottleneck but it does handle Elite pretty well compared to the BBC Micro original, and Stunt Car Racer compares favorably to the other Spectrum and CPC versions.

For sound, the C64 compares well to the consoles with its versatile SID chip, only held back a bit by the three channel limit, but which is something that developers eventually worked around either with a trick to also play back samples (actually doable thanks to a bug), and/or combining bass and drums on a single channel. Some of the features of this chip also let a single channel produce sounds that would require two channels and/or FM synthesis on other systems.

The C64's commercial period goes out with a bang thanks to the fast and colorful platformer Mayhem in Monsterland. Much later homebrew versions of Sonic SMS and SMB NES show that it doesn't have much of a problem running those games either although Sonic does require a 256 KB RAM expansion addon to the C64 and there's a bit of added slowdown in SMB.

EGA era DOS PC (i286 CPU at 6-8 MHz by default, IBM PC/AT (1984-around 1991, 256-512 KB RAM/up to 3.5 MB w/ expansions), Compaq Deskpro 286 (1985) or IBM PS/2 Model 30 w/ i286 (1987, came before the PS/1))

I think this era further distinguished the PC and console libraries in that 3D games were generally ahead technically, while 2D games had some issues due to lack of hardware scrolling and sprites (although there are some games from before the well known Commander Keen that had smooth multidirectional scrolling, such as Thexder and APB), and most good developers seeming less interested in following arcade and console genre trends so when you saw ports to PC DOS, they were often lacking. Note that while the fourth gen equivalent tech had already arrived by 1987, a i286 w/ EGA setup seems to have been the most popular until 1991 or so and we don't see a bigger shift to VGA graphics by game developers until 1990. Note that both of the models mentioned here had to be upgraded to EGA AFAIK, though perhaps you could by one with it pre-installed as well. On a side note, there's also the Tandy 1000 TL & TL/2 models (1988?, 8 MHz Intel 80286, 640-768 KB RAM) from around the same time, which had better default RAM and came with TGA graphics, generally looking the same as their EGA counterparts.

This seems like a good point to talk a little about a main difference between PC series and console generations and why PC is more messy. First off, consoles were and are focused on the user buying one version of the console and then having every game work for that system for years to come, even if there are differences within the game carts themselves as was a big factor for the continued success of the NES. There are of course exceptions, like the Famicom Disk System for the JP NES, or the later MCD and 32X for the MD where customers eventually said enough and the latter flopped. With IBM PCs being (for the most part?) backwards compatible and the later VGA card and Sound Blaster card being compatible with a 286 CPU, you'll find a myriad of setups supported for many games. I've also read that a 386 CPU at the same clock speed is fully backwards compatible with a 286 one when it comes to running a game, it won't run too fast on the 386 then. Unfortunately it's tricky to find footage for most games with a default or close to it "IBM PC/AT" setup as there are also higher clocked 286 CPUs. Some VGA era DOS games are still smooth on a more standard i286 build, such as Pinball Fantasies, while others like Wolfenstein 3D play well on a 16 MHz+ i286 w/ 3+ MB expanded RAM. By 1990 or so, about 640 KB RAM seems expected by most games.

Sound-wise, the dominant solution until the early '90s was the 1987 AdLib card which features a YM3812/OPL2 sound chip, also used in various arcade games since 1986 (see Rygar). It seems this had to be bought separately unless you bought an IBM PS/1 model. From 1990 onwards, Sound Blaster cards would replace it as the PC DOS standard but still include the OPL2 chip for compatibility, and while they offered sample playback and eventually a bit more advanced FM synth, OPL2 soundtracks were still common up until 1993 or so, which is why a lot of people remember Doom's music sounding like this. This mono, 2-op FM synth chip has two modes - you either get 9 channels and the composer can define each instrument/SFX themselves, or 6 user defined and 5 pre-defined percussion instruments. Furthermore, this chip offers 4 basic sound waves (sine, half-sine, semi-sine/absolute sine and saw/quarter sine) with which to shape an instrument/SFX rather than only standard sine waves like most of the other FM synth chips used for games. While this and the number of channels sounds nice, 2-op FM is simpler than 4-op and those pre-defined drum sounds aren't the best you could get from the chip either. Many PC DOS developers also treated it like budget MIDI, not really putting in the effort with their FM instruments nor using all the effects available. This eventually gave the chip (or early PC DOS sound) a bad reputation compared to the competition. That said, here are a few of the best examples: Wacky Wheels, Fury of the Furries, Genpei War/Genpei Kassen, Tyrian, MegaRace and Zone 66 (OPL2+samples). And here's a good comparison between OPL1, 2 and 3 using the same song.

If you had the money, you could also buy a powerful MT-32 module from 1987 onwards, which uses Linear Arithmetic synthesis - a form of sample-based synthesis combined with subtractive synthesis (filters are used to shape the timbre of an instrument). In simpler terms it's comparable to earlier '90s MIDI music and some SNES music, but with an older chiptune element to it, and it could sound a lot better than what you'd generally hear in games at the time. While it wasn't that popular at the time, almost 700 DOS games do support MT-32 sound. I mention it here because it was at its peak in the late '80s-early '90s, in-between the console generations.

MSX2 (1985, Zilog Z80A CPU at 3.579 MHz (8-bit))

The successor to the MSX seems to have the best color output compared to the third console gen and PCs mapped to it here, excluding tricks, using a 512 color palette. While it was pretty much unknown outside of Japan unlike the MSX1, there was a decent amount of great games made for it during this period, as well as some notable later homebrew titles. A few games like Space Mambo and Aleste 2 can even be mistaken for fourth gen console games at a glance, however if we look closer it actually displays only 16 colors during gameplay. In image stills, 256 can instead be displayed at 256 x 212 resolution (see for example Shin Mao Golvellius's intro). It does have hardware scrolling, although horizontal scrolling is still limited in some ways, which is perhaps why Konami's side view games were usually flip screen and why Space Mambo's scrolling is a bit choppy. Shin Maou Golvellius and Super Cooks stand out here with smooth horizontal scrolling. It also features hardware sprites, although the max number seems lower than on SMS and NES.

The MSX2's audio capabilities could be expanded with the YM2413/OPLL chip (aka the FM-Pac addon) also used in the JP version of the Master System and some arcade games, and this chip was actually built into some later MSX2 models. This is basically a cut back version of the OPL2 chip, where only one out of 16 instruments total can be user-defined and played at a time, and it only features two default sound waves instead of four. However, it can be combined with the default AY-3 chip and this was done for a variety of games, with some of the best examples being Illusion City, Sorcerian, Xak 1-2 and Final Fantasy. The FM chip could also be upgraded with stereo audio using two chips, although this wasn't used by any games at the time AFAIK.

The later MSX2+ (1988) could actually display 19268 different colors from a 32768 (15-bit RGB) palette, but it seems the limitation is much lower in-game. The only example I have is M-Kid, a 1995 homebrew however.

NEC PC-88 (1986-1989 models, NEC µPD70008 CPU at 8 MHz)

While the PC-88 series maintains a lacking color output for this gen, still uses an 8-bit CPU and seems to not feature hardware scrolling, there are some impressive 2D action games here such as the 1986 Silpheed (which also features basic speech synthesis), Wibarm and Thexder 2. The most technically impressive one is perhaps the shooter Final Crisis from 1991. For non-action games there's Snatcher, which was also on the MSX2, and probably some other notable ones that haven't been translated yet. For 3D games, there's Star Cruiser (1988), an ambitious sci-fi Action Adventure/Space Combat Sim with fairly smooth movement along the lines of Catacomb 3D and Wolfenstein 3D and with some outdoors areas while moving around on foot.

For sound, the OPN/YM2203 chip continues to be dominant and it starts sounding quite good in 1987 when used for games like Ys, Sorcerian and Space Harrier. The PC-88 series also starts supporting the OPNA/YM2608 chip during this era, from the PC-8801 FA (1987) model onwards. This chip is nearly identical to the setup used in the MD/GEN when it comes to the FM and square-wave based synthesis, featuring stereo FM with 6 channels, channel 3 mode and the AY-3 channels like in the previous chip. There's also a single 4-bit ADPCM channel called "Delta-T" (which can actually sound as good as contemporary MD/GEN games due to a higher max sampling rate of 55 KHz), and a six channel ADPCM system playing pre-defined samples from a built-in ROM, although these don't sound all that great. Composers generally went with the OPN chip for PC-88 but certain games seem to only support this later chip.

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What are your thoughts, do you agree with this mapping or is it all wrong?

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More systems to check out, potentially: Atari XL? (based on recent homebrew) - need to find more games footage/info, Macintosh II (1987, up to 8 MB RAM)? - pretty uninteresting for games, NEC PC-98 (1986 VX model? - i286 CPU)

Sources besides wikipedia and youtube gameplay footage:

How "oldschool" graphics worked Part 1 - Commodore and Nintendo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfh0ytz8S0k

How Old-School Computers Played Sound Samples | MVG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xWyLeVnxFU

Sound Blaster revisions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLeQ2ZAbr3U