Of the 1980s 8-bit computing era, the Commodore 64 was the "best value" for getting a lot of functionality for the price. It had 64k of RAM when some others only had 16k. It had a really good built-in sound chip with polyphonic sounds (makes it richer sounding for programming video games music and sound effects). Some other computers had cheaper chips with monophonic sound which makes simplistic beeps and tones. It outsold all the other computers like Apple II, Atari 400/800, Texas Instruments TI-99, etc. This meant it had a big ecosystem of 3rd-party add-ons.

The article talks about COMPUTE! magazine. They often had free games where they listed the source code in the magazine pages. The reader would then manually type in the code by hand into the computer and save it to floppy or tape drive. The magazine would have the same game ported to different computers so there would be separate source code listings for Commodore, Atari, etc. The Commodore 64 versions of the game would always end up being the best version to run because of the hardware advantages mentioned above.

https://www.google.com/search?q=compute%21+magazine+program+...