The Mac classic was about as pure as you could get from an architectural point of view.

A 1 bit framebuffer and a CPU gets you most of what the machine can do.

Most of the quirk abuse of 8-bit machines came from features that were provided with limitations. Sprites, but only 8 of them, colours but only 2 in any 8x8 cell. Multicolour but only in one of two palettes and you'll hate both.

Almost all of the hacks were to get around the limitations of the features.

I don't know if the decision apple made was specifically with future machines in mind. It certainly would have been a headache to make new machines 5 generations down the track if the first one had player missile graphics.