History Platform / IBMPersonalComputer

* ''VideoGame/SpyHunter''

* [[Platform/MicrosoftWindows Windows Games]]

[[folder:DOS Games]]
Games that are run through DOS. These remained popular until the mid-90's when Windows replaced DOS as the OS on most computers. Windows has tried to keep compatibility with them throughout the years; however, with Windows no longer being DOS based, along with the move to 64-bit versions of Windows that don't support older 16-bit programs, the use of an UsefulNotes/{{emulat|ion}}or (such as UsefulNotes/DOSBox) is required at this point.

** ''VideoGame/{{Mega Man|DOS}}: The Robots are Revolting'' (different from [[VideoGame/MegaMan3 the NES game]])

* ''[[VideoGame/MegaManDOS Mega Man]]'' (different from [[VideoGame/MegaMan1 the NES game]])
** ''[[VideoGame/MegaManDOS Mega Man 3: The Robots are Revolting]]'' (different from [[VideoGame/MegaMan3 the NES game]])

[[index]]

* ''Videogame/AlienLegacy''

* ''Videogame/FullThrottle''

* ''Videogame/ManiacMansion''

* ''Videogame/{{Quarantine|1994}}''

* ''Videogame/{{Tetris}}''

* ''VideoGame/TheSeventhGuest''

* ''The City of Lost Children''

* ''VideoGame/InSearchOfDrRiptide''

** ''VideoGame/Fallout2''

* ''VideoGame/StarWarsChess''

[[index]]

[[/index]]

[[/index]]

[[index]]

* ''VideoGame/YouDontKnowJack''

[[/index]]

[[index]]

* UsefulNotes/WindowsGames

Born in the wake of the Platform/AppleII's success, the IBM Personal Computer (dubbed the "5150" in IBM's internal numbering system) was IBM's official entry into the desktop computer system market, and by far their most successful. Earlier attempts, like the 5100 desktop APL machine and the [=DisplayWriter=] word-processing machine, hadn't taken off, and IBM needed something ''fast'' to compete with Apple. Bypassing the usual IBM bureaucracy, in 1980 they tasked a team of engineers in an IBM office in Boca Raton, Florida with developing the new machine and gave them an unusual amount of freedom in developing the system.

IBM followed up the PC with the XT in 1983, which removed the original PC's cassette interface, added more expansion slots (along with an optional expansion chassis), and made a hard drive option available. 1983 also saw the introduction of the ''[[Platform/IBMPCjr PCjr]]'', a severely crippled version of the XT intended for home use; its main claims to fame were the addition of a 16-color, 320×200 graphics mode and an internal [[UsefulNotes/GamingAudio 4-voice PSG]] (the same Texas Instruments model used in their own Platform/TI99 series and, more famously, in the Platform/ColecoVision), both of which inspired one of the most famous clone families, the UsefulNotes/Tandy1000. Next was the PC/AT in 1984, which introduced the 80286 processor and a fully 16-bit architecture, along with the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA), which finally made 16-color graphics (in resolutions all the way up to 640×350, although 320x200 and 320x240 were the most popular resolutions) possible on a regular PC. And with ''that'', with the capacity for attractive applications and especially entertainment software, the march of history began...

From TheNew10s, the popularity and ability of graphics cards grew rapidly. Modern games, where the graphics pipeline is the main bottleneck, could be run across multiple displays simultaneously and at resolutions of up to 8K, could be done in stereoscopic 3D or in VR with ease. [=GPU=]s began to become more accepted in for uses beyond the scope of video games and graphics work, and today are perhaps the primary vehicle of computation in modern scientific computing, ArtificialIntelligence[[note]]particularly in large-language models used within products such as [=ChatGPT=] and within UsefulNotes/AIGeneratedArtwork[[/note]], cryptocurrency, and blockchain technology. The number of graphics cards sold surged among consumers during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic due to the amount of interest surrounding both PC gaming and cryptocurrency increasing dramatically. The concept of a general-purpose GPU which could be arbitrarily and transparently used for any calculation has also become popular among developers, further cementing the [=GPU=] as an integral part of desktop computing.

Because of the platform's {{Long Runner|s}} status and its eventual passing into the public domain, there are literally ''tens of thousands'' of different makes, models and configurations, made by hundreds of producers (both large vendors contributing to the development of the platform and garage tinkerers assembling their own dream machines) with even more custom-built by hand, so only notable models and some of the typical examples of an era will be presented here. Notable clones, particularly the Platform/IBMPCjr and the UsefulNotes/Tandy1000, and consoles based on PC architecture (the Platform/{{Xbox}}, Platform/PlayStation4, and Platform/XboxOne) have their own pages.

IBM followed up the PC with the XT in 1983, which removed the original PC's cassette interface, added more expansion slots (along with an optional expansion chassis), and made a hard drive option available. 1983 also saw the introduction of the ''[[Platform/IBMPCjr PCjr]]'', a severely crippled version of the XT intended for home use; its main claims to fame were the addition of a 16-color, 320×200 graphics mode and an internal [[UsefulNotes/GamingAudio 4-voice PSG]] (the same Texas Instruments model used in their own UsefulNotes/TI99 series and, more famously, in the Platform/ColecoVision), both of which inspired one of the most famous clone families, the UsefulNotes/Tandy1000. Next was the PC/AT in 1984, which introduced the 80286 processor and a fully 16-bit architecture, along with the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA), which finally made 16-color graphics (in resolutions all the way up to 640×350, although 320x200 and 320x240 were the most popular resolutions) possible on a regular PC. And with ''that'', with the capacity for attractive applications and especially entertainment software, the march of history began...

At first, the IBM PC didn't have much to offer home users and gamers. It was new, expensive, not as good with graphics as the Platform/AppleII or the [[UsefulNotes/Atari8BitComputers Atari 800]], and was directed squarely at business users. However, IBM's name on the machine made it a safe buy for businesses that already used IBM hardware, and they ended up buying the machines in droves. The machine's open design sparked a huge third-party expansion market, with dozens of vendors selling memory expansion boards, hard drive upgrades and more. It wasn't long until other computer makers started examining the PC's design and figuring out how to make clones of the machine that could run PC software without issues. The one thing stopping them, however, was the ROM. IBM had a copyright on what they called the "ROM BIOS", and while cloning the hardware was easy, cloning the ROM would be much harder, with few vendors able to get it completely right (and the few that tried too hard, such as Eagle, getting sued into oblivion). It wasn't until Compaq introduced the Portable in 1983 that a truly 100% IBM compatible PC was available, and after that, software houses such as Phoenix,[[note]]who provided the BIOS and much of the DOS for the Olivetti M series and their American AT&T counterparts, as well as providing BIOS code for Samsung, Packard Bell and others[[/note]] Award[[note]]who provided the BIOS code for a few now-obscure American brands such as AST, as well as the BIOS for a huge number of clone boards from the late 1990s to the introduction of UEFI in the late 2000s, but eventually merged with Phoenix[[/note]] and American Megatrends[[note]]also used in a lot of clone boards, as well as high-end boards they built themselves; most Intel-made motherboards also used customized AMI BIOS. Not as common as Award on clones during the pre-UEFI era, but their Aptio UEFI BIOS is now almost ubiquitous[[/note]] followed suit, opening the floodgates to an entire industry of low-priced PC compatibles.

Because of the platform's {{Long Runner|s}} status and its eventual passing into the public domain, there are literally ''tens of thousands'' of different makes, models and configurations, made by hundreds of producers (both large vendors contributing to the development of the platform and garage tinkerers assembling their own dream machines) with even more custom-built by hand, so only notable models and some of the typical examples of an era will be presented here. Notable clones, particularly the Platform/IBMPCjr and the UsefulNotes/Tandy1000, and consoles based on PC architecture (the UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}}, UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, and UsefulNotes/XboxOne) have their own pages.

** IBM's decision to retain the by the time entirely obsolete 8086 and the aging and notoriously idiosyncratic[[note]]Bill Gates reportedly called the 286 "a brain-dead chip", and then-editor in chief of ''PC Magazine'', Bill Machrone, called the 286 "brain damaged" at the first OS/2 Developer's Conference in 1987[[/note]] 80286 processors in the lineup was the first step in the IBM/Microsoft OS quarrel that led to the birth of [[UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows Windows NT]].

** VGA would end up exploding the PC gaming world. Not only did it introduce the new 640×480×16 color hi-res mode, but it also introduced the new, incredibly rich and colorful 256-color modes, and in the pretty nifty 320×200/320×240 resolutions to boot. These were the same resolutions used by CGA and EGA, letting game developers support VGA and the older modes [[PaletteSwap simply by using different palettes]]. Moreover, unlike the EGA, these high-color modes were very fast and straightforward, using packed pixels[[note]]All 8 bits of a pixel were kept at the same address, unlike the EGA's four different color planes[[/note]] and fitting into the same memory segment. Also, unlike EGA, all 262,000 colors the DAC could support were guaranteed to be available in every mode, even 320×200 and 640×200, which opened the door to UsefulNotes/{{SNES}}-like fade-ins and fade-outs and VideoGame/{{DOOM}}'s gamma correction feature, among other effects. For the first time in history, PC graphics could seriously compete with consoles and the UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}}.
* Not everything was as bright on the OS side, though. OS/2 was delayed, and when finally released, its original 1.0 version lacked the much-ballyhooed GUI (which was released only in version 1.2 about a year later), it couldn't run more than one DOS application (and even that not very well), it didn't work on 8086 [=CPUs=] at all, and what's more, the differing ideas that IBM and Microsoft had about its development eventually led to Microsoft [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere ditching the project for good]] in favor of [[UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows Windows]], about midway through the development of what was intended to become "OS/2 3.0".[[note]]Which Microsoft kept and converted into Windows NT; because of this, NT-based Windows has retained a number of OS/2-isms, even in Windows 10.[[/note]] It also worked entirely differently from MS-DOS, requiring programmers to learn the entirely new API and architecture, as well as purchase an extremely expensive developer's kit; all of this contributed to the perennial lack of software for it.

IBM's attempt to make the PS/2 into something more home-friendly, after the success of the PS/2 line for business. The name is a bit of a misnomer, as the line came ''after'' the PS/2 machines were launched. Instead, the numbering scheme was meant to signify that the machine was a watered-down version of the PS/2. Taking a few notes from the original UsefulNotes/AppleMacintosh, the PS/1 featured an all-in-one design with numerous nods towards Apple's 1984 machine. Again, IBM's usage of proprietary connectors and ports, as well as the uncompetitively high price point compared to the PC clones, as well as lack of upgradibility for the lower end models, meant that it sold poorly for its intended market.

Born in the wake of the UsefulNotes/AppleII's success, the IBM Personal Computer (dubbed the "5150" in IBM's internal numbering system) was IBM's official entry into the desktop computer system market, and by far their most successful. Earlier attempts, like the 5100 desktop APL machine and the [=DisplayWriter=] word-processing machine, hadn't taken off, and IBM needed something ''fast'' to compete with Apple. Bypassing the usual IBM bureaucracy, in 1980 they tasked a team of engineers in an IBM office in Boca Raton, Florida with developing the new machine and gave them an unusual amount of freedom in developing the system.

The other big influence on the IBM PC's design was the world of ''S-100 machines'', which were based around the Intel 8080 (or, later the Zilog Z80) and the "S-100" bus that had been introduced in the pioneering Altair 8800. These machines ran an OS called ''CP/M'', which had been invented by a programmer named Gary Kildall in 1974 and was based indirectly on Digital Equipment Corp.'s various [[UsefulNotes/OperatingSystem operating systems]] for their [[UsefulNotes/MainframesAndMinicomputers PDP series of minicomputers]]. While they weren't nearly as slick as the UsefulNotes/AppleII, S-100 machines were popular with hobbyists and businesses alike, and several CP/M applications for businesses, like ''[=WordStar=]'' and ''[=dBASE=]'', were making inroads.

In one break with the Apple II's precedent, and as an improvement on the serial consoles S-100 machines used, IBM decided to leave the graphics system off the motherboard and provide two add-on cards -- a text-only Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA),[[note]]Also often called MDPA, because it also carried a parallel port for connecting a printer[[/note]] intended for business users, and a Color/Graphics Adapter (CGA), for games, education and emulating other color-capable IBM hardware. This was done to allow buyers a choice in the video hardware, as well as to save space on the motherboard. While MDA was widely praised for its outstanding clarity and readability, especially when combined with IBM's original 5151 monitor, which showed off MDA's effective 720×350 resolution, CGA had a barely adequate 320×200 (with strange, unnatural-looking palettes, to boot) and a distorted, monochrome-only 640×200 and was nearly universally panned. CGA's composite mode, on the other hand, supported 16 colors by [[GoodBadBugs exploiting NTSC artifacting]], comparing favorably to the UsefulNotes/Commodore64 and the UsefulNotes/AppleII, as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc this video]] by WebVideo/The8BitGuy shows. IBM intended for most people to use the composite mode with a TV using an RF modulator or a dedicated composite monitor, just as with other home computers of the era. Many early PC games were written with composite CGA in mind. Composite CGA had the downside of 80-column text being unreadable due to artifacting, making it useless for word processing. People who wanted the 16-color mode and needed to work with text either used two monitors, one composite or RGB, or used a monitor that could switch between composite and RGB modes. Some composite monitors could switch to monochrome for working with 80-column applications, or people using a TV could just turn the color knob all the way down.

The base system came with just 16K (upgradable to 64K), like the Apple II, but could be expanded to a then-breathtaking 640K thanks to the Intel 8088 processor inside, which had a 1 MB address space (huge for a desktop machine in 1981). It was possible to go above the 640K memory limit through the use of a combination of backfilling and "UMA" RAM, [[note]]both methods requires the user to install an additional 128K of memory to the system, bringing the internal RAM up to 768KB[[/note]] or by using ''EMS cards'', which used bank switching (similar to some UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem game cartridges) to address the additional memory. While the memory cards were slow by today's standards, they were still faster than when programs swapped data off the even slower floppy drive. They also weren't cheap, but the fact that several business and professional programs could use it to speed up processing meant they still sold well until the PS/2 with its larger memory limit was introduced -- and even then, it still emulated the EMS card as memory above 640K was presented by the [=EMM386=] driver to programs as EMS memory, although newer programs could support accessing the amount of memory directly.

IBM followed up the PC with the XT in 1983, which removed the original PC's cassette interface, added more expansion slots (along with an optional expansion chassis), and made a hard drive option available. 1983 also saw the introduction of the ''[[Platform/IBMPCjr PCjr]]'', a severely crippled version of the XT intended for home use; its main claims to fame were the addition of a 16-color, 320×200 graphics mode and an internal [[UsefulNotes/GamingAudio 4-voice PSG]] (the same Texas Instruments model used in their own UsefulNotes/TI99 series and, more famously, in the UsefulNotes/ColecoVision), both of which inspired one of the most famous clone families, the UsefulNotes/Tandy1000. Next was the PC/AT in 1984, which introduced the 80286 processor and a fully 16-bit architecture, along with the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA), which finally made 16-color graphics (in resolutions all the way up to 640×350, although 320x200 and 320x240 were the most popular resolutions) possible on a regular PC. And with ''that'', with the capacity for attractive applications and especially entertainment software, the march of history began...


!!The Rise Of The Clones

At first, the IBM PC didn't have much to offer home users and gamers. It was new, expensive, not as good with graphics as the UsefulNotes/AppleII or the [[UsefulNotes/Atari8BitComputers Atari 800]], and was directed squarely at business users. However, IBM's name on the machine made it a safe buy for businesses that already used IBM hardware, and they ended up buying the machines in droves. The machine's open design sparked a huge third-party expansion market, with dozens of vendors selling memory expansion boards, hard drive upgrades and more. It wasn't long until other computer makers started examining the PC's design and figuring out how to make clones of the machine that could run PC software without issues. The one thing stopping them, however, was the ROM. IBM had a copyright on what they called the "ROM BIOS", and while cloning the hardware was easy, cloning the ROM would be much harder, with few vendors able to get it completely right (and the few that tried too hard, such as Eagle, getting sued into oblivion). It wasn't until Compaq introduced the Portable in 1983 that a truly 100% IBM compatible PC was available, and after that, software houses such as Phoenix,[[note]]who provided the BIOS and much of the DOS for the Olivetti M series and their American AT&T counterparts, as well as providing BIOS code for Samsung, Packard Bell and others[[/note]] Award[[note]]who provided the BIOS code for a few now-obscure American brands such as AST, as well as the BIOS for a huge number of clone boards from the late 1990s to the introduction of UEFI in the late 2000s, but eventually merged with Phoenix[[/note]] and American Megatrends[[note]]also used in a lot of clone boards, as well as high-end boards they built themselves; most Intel-made motherboards also used customized AMI BIOS. Not as common as Award on clones during the pre-UEFI era, but their Aptio UEFI BIOS is now almost ubiquitous[[/note]] followed suit, opening the floodgates to an entire industry of low-priced PC compatibles.

While Microsoft intended MS-DOS to be a universal operating system where applications could be written once and run anywhere (similar to UsefulNotes/{{UNIX}}), its programming interface was so poor that many software developers bypassed it and directly accessed the hardware. Even Microsoft itself was guilty of this, with early versions of VideoGame/MicrosoftFlightSimulator often used as a compatibility benchmark. A number of manufacturers did introduce MS-DOS-based computers, but they all failed in the marketplace because they weren't fully IBM compatible.

In terms of gaming, the Tandy 1000 was the turning point. A clone of the ill-fated Platform/IBMPCjr, the Tandy 1000 featured greater PC compatibility and expansion using standard expansion cards instead of sidecars while keeping the enhanced graphics and sound. With the porting of ''VideoGame/KingsQuest'', it proved that the PC could be a viable gaming platform. The Tandy 1000 and other cheap clones such as the Leading Edge Model D shifted the home computer market in the U.S. away from the UsefulNotes/{{Commodore 64}} to the PC in the latter half of the 1980s. Such was the strength of the PC market that even Commodore and Atari came out with their own PC clones.

With the introduction of VESA Local Bus and then PCI between 1993 and 1995, along with improved video, sound and storage hardware, the PC started to look less like a classic 8-bit computer with bolted-on upgrades and more like a high-end RISC workstation. The introduction of the second-wave Pentium in 1995 and the Pentium II and AMD K6 in 1997, along with the ACPI UsefulNotes/{{API}} in 1998, blurred the distinctions even further, and convinced people that a cheap desktop could perform as well as an expensive UNIX workstation. AMD sweetened the deal further in 1999 with the announcement of the "x86-64" instruction set, which added 64-bit capability to the PC and fixed some of the 80x86's long-standing quirks; the first CPU to feature it was the Opteron, released in 2003.

Then in 1995, the 3D craze hit. While pseudo-3D graphics had been around for a while at this point in the form of ''Wolfenstein 3D'', ''Doom'' and its various clones, the rise of multimedia, as well as hype caused by the first generation of VR glasses hitting the market and the seminal 1995 computer-animated film ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory1'', caused gamers to crave better, more realistic 3D. A startup called Nvidia released a 3D chip called the [=NV1=]. It was quickly picked up by Diamond Technologies who were looking to make their card stand out of the then already saturated "graphics accelerator" market. The card proved to be rather impressive, as it could replace both the video card and the sound card, and produced beautiful and fluid 3D graphics, but ultimately it was a flop due to the oddball choice of quadrilateral polygons, which sent both Nvidia and Diamond back to the drawing board when UsefulNotes/DirectX chose the more traditional triangular polygons when it was ratified instead.

One of the other downsides to the original PC was audio support. With the exception of the PC''jr'' and the Tandy clones, the audio capabilities of a PC were no better than that of a baseline UsefulNotes/AppleII, as they were equipped with only a basic beeper (though unlike the Apple II, you got a bit of help from having one of the system timers wired to the speaker, allowing its use as a one-voice divide-down synth). The first recorded audio device for the PC was the Texas Instruments [=SN76489=], a General Instruments AY-3-8910 clone for the [=PCjr=], which was co-opted by Tandy into several of their PC compatibles. However, the [=SN76489=] was specific to those models of computers, and weren't available in add-on card form for owners of other machines. The first recorded "sound card" created for existing [=PCs=] was the IBM Speech Option card, which was an expensive kit meant for PC telephony (later also repurposed for speech therapy) and was not meant for consumer use. The first sound card marketed to consumers, however was the Covox Speech Thing, a sound device that plugged into the parallel port, but the first widely accepted card was [=AdLib=]'s [=OPL2=] offering -- launching at the same time as IBM's Music Option card and Creative's Music System card—which won out due to its music quality (Creative's option was crude and used two Philips square wave [=PSGs=], and as a result sounded really lackluster) and price (the IBM Music Option card was priced much more expensively as it targeted musicians; IBM had not considered gamers to be a target customer of the card). However, the [=AdLib=] was only a synthesizer card, and as such had no other audio capabilities outside of playing music and rudimentary sound effects (although there exists a hack to transform the card into a rudimentary PSG, few games supported it, and the audio quality was barely passable at best. Furthermore, once the [=AdLib=] enters PSG mode, music playback can no longer be performed until the card is reset. This means developers had to choose to use the card for either sound effects or music, but not both, although some developers like Epic Games managed worked around this by using an audio engine that puts the card into sound effects mode, then used tracker music and audio mixing to achieve sound effects). Covox saw this as an opportunity and advertised the Speech Thing as a great way to supplement the [=AdLib=]'s musical capabilities. While the Speech Thing was a rather crude device and the audio was just slightly better than putting an [=AdLib=] into PSG mode, its relatively low cost meant that most gamers could get one to supplement the [=AdLib=] card, and more importantly, it ensured that background music could be played alongside sound effects.

Then ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}'' was ported over from the UsefulNotes/AppleMacintosh.

Because of the platform's LongRunner status and its eventual passing into the public domain, there are literally ''tens of thousands'' of different makes, models and configurations, made by hundreds of producers (both large vendors contributing to the development of the platform and garage tinkerers assembling their own dream machines) with even more custom-built by hand, so only notable models and some of the typical examples of an era will be presented here. Notable clones, particularly the Platform/IBMPCjr and the UsefulNotes/Tandy1000, and consoles based on PC architecture (the UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}}, UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, and UsefulNotes/XboxOne) have their own pages.

IBM followed up the PC with the XT in 1983, which removed the original PC's cassette interface, added more expansion slots (along with an optional expansion chassis), and made a hard drive option available. 1983 also saw the introduction of the ''[[UsefulNotes/IBMPCjr PCjr]]'', a severely crippled version of the XT intended for home use; its main claims to fame were the addition of a 16-color, 320×200 graphics mode and an internal [[UsefulNotes/GamingAudio 4-voice PSG]] (the same Texas Instruments model used in their own UsefulNotes/TI99 series and, more famously, in the UsefulNotes/ColecoVision), both of which inspired one of the most famous clone families, the UsefulNotes/Tandy1000. Next was the PC/AT in 1984, which introduced the 80286 processor and a fully 16-bit architecture, along with the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA), which finally made 16-color graphics (in resolutions all the way up to 640×350, although 320x200 and 320x240 were the most popular resolutions) possible on a regular PC. And with ''that'', with the capacity for attractive applications and especially entertainment software, the march of history began...

In terms of gaming, the Tandy 1000 was the turning point. A clone of the ill-fated UsefulNotes/IBMPCjr, the Tandy 1000 featured greater PC compatibility and expansion using standard expansion cards instead of sidecars while keeping the enhanced graphics and sound. With the porting of ''VideoGame/KingsQuest'', it proved that the PC could be a viable gaming platform. The Tandy 1000 and other cheap clones such as the Leading Edge Model D shifted the home computer market in the U.S. away from the UsefulNotes/{{Commodore 64}} to the PC in the latter half of the 1980s. Such was the strength of the PC market that even Commodore and Atari came out with their own PC clones.

Because of the platform's LongRunner status and its eventual passing into the public domain, there are literally ''tens of thousands'' of different makes, models and configurations, made by hundreds of producers (both large vendors contributing to the development of the platform and garage tinkerers assembling their own dream machines) with even more custom-built by hand, so only notable models and some of the typical examples of an era will be presented here. Notable clones, particularly the UsefulNotes/IBMPCjr and the UsefulNotes/Tandy1000, and consoles based on PC architecture (the UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}}, UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, and UsefulNotes/XboxOne) have their own pages.

--> Main article: UsefulNotes/IBMPCJr

So far, there has never been a successful competitor to x86 processors in the market, with most of their challengers either halting further development, as in the case of the Motorola 68000, Alpha, SPARC, MIPS, and Itanium, or relegated to embedded systems, as has [=PowerPC=] (though remained in use in Macs until the mid-2000s). However, [[UsefulNotes/AcornArchimedes ARM]] [=CPUs=] have seen massive increases in computing power since the mid-2000s, and have since become the become much more competitive with x86 designs. Chips using the ARM ISA have dominated consumer electronics for years because of their clean system design and low power usage, an important feature for battery-powered devices. By contrast, Intel had to use a radically different architecture for the Atom line of processors to compete in the low-power space, which could still not match the performance-per-watt ratio of competing ARM-based designs.[[note]]Intel discontinued the system-on-chip version of the Atom in 2020; the modern descendants of the netbook (2-in-1 "convertible" laptops, like the Surface or the Lenovo YOGA, and Intel-based Chromebooks) now use mainstream Core processors. Intel processors are still uncommon in pure tablets, which have mostly stuck with ARM.[[/note]] Chips from Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Samsung and Apple show that ARM chips have a future beyond embedded systems, and with the consumer trends from desktops and to laptops and tablets, even Microsoft has began to offer ARM versions of Windows, starting with Windows 8 as the highly stripped-down "Windows RT" and to Windows 10 and 11 having full-featured ARM ports.

In the latter half of TheNew10s, there were rumors that Apple have been planning to switch their desktop machines to the ARM ISA. After years without any confirmation, Apple finally announced that the transition was happening at the 2020 Worldwide Developers' Conference, and all Macs from late 2020 would use in-house ARM designs. The funny thing is, the ARM CPU was indeed originally created to power desktops, and was initially used in a desktop computer called the [[UsefulNotes/AcornArchimedes Archimedes]] from the UK-based firm Acorn Computers[[note]]ARM originally stood for ''Acorn RISC Machine'' before Acorn's demise and the subsequent founding of ARM Ltd, when the name was [[FunWithAcronyms slightly altered to]] ''Advanced RISC Machines'' since one of the investor, Apple, doesn't want their competitor name in the joint venture[[/note]], however they shifted to embedded electronics after [=PCs=] gained dominance. Now that Apple is making the switch, it means that the architecture has come full circle.

* ''VideoGame/EscapeFromHell''

* ''VideoGame/TheDig''

In the latter half of TheNew10s, there were rumors that Apple have been planning to switch their desktop machines to the ARM ISA. After years without any confirmation, Apple finally announced that the transition was happening at the 2020 Worldwide Developers' Conference, and all Macs from late 2020 would use in-house ARM designs. The funny thing is, the ARM CPU was indeed originally created to power desktops, and was initially used in a desktop computer called the [[UsefulNotes/AcornArchimedes Archimedes]] from the UK-based firm Acorn Computers[[note]]ARM originally stood for ''Acorn RISC Machine'' before Acorn's demise and the subsequent founding of ARM Ltd, when the name was [[FunWithAcronyms slightly altered to]] ''Advanced RISC Machines''[[/note]], however they shifted to embedded electronics after [=PCs=] gained dominance. Now that Apple is making the switch, it means that the architecture has come full circle.

* ''VideoGame/Portal1986''

* ''VideoGame/{{Cyborg}}''

* ''VideoGame/{{Destroyer}}''