The 8-Bit Era's Weird Uncle: The TI-99/4A

Quite an impact for a graphics chip coming from a rather unsuccessful computer. I never played around with or even saw a TI-99 but from my understanding the CPU needing to use VRAM as data storage (because the system RAM was way too low for the time), accessed through IO ports, really hampered the machine.

While it lacked the hardware scrolling, massive master palette and display list tricks of the Atari machines, it displayed multi-color high-resolution graphics with ease. Being able to set a different color for each line of a background tile allowed for really detailed art.

Only 4 sprites per line like the Atari (not counting the weird missiles), but the TI-99 sprites are 16 pixels wide and high-resolution, rather than 8 fat pixels wide, and there's 32 to work with in total rather than needing to use raster splits to multiplex sprites.

Way ahead of its time. MSX homebrew games like Mini Ghost, The Cure, Invasion of the Zombie Monsters, etc. really show what it can do.

That's the biggest "what if" omission of the TMS9918 for me - I wonder how the 8-bit landscape would have evolved if it had even minimal support like the scroll registers of the VIC-II...