From what I understand the advantage the 65xx had over the 8008&#x2F;8080, and Z80 back in the day was a) price and b) way better cycle efficiency and c) faster interrupt response. The 6502 could often do in 1 cycle what a Z80 took 4 cycles to do. An 8-bit memory read or write was 1 cycle. For 8-bit home computers mostly used for graphics and games, that&#x27;s cool cuz you got good performance per dollar.<p>I guess 65c816 kept that speed and its simplicity and offered an upgrade path. But only the IIGS and the SNES used it.<p>Direct page is pretty cool when you consider that the cost of a memory access was 1 cycle. So it&#x27;s effectively 256 extra registers (tho still only one ALU).