They could have used gaming consoles with more mainstreamed 'developement kits/setups' instead? That existed at least for some Sony Playstation, or something like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X68000
I mean, going farther back, the original Japanese version of the first Nintendo console was called the Famicom, which was short for Family Computer. It had a keyboard accessory, disk system, modem, tape drive add-on, and a port of BASIC.
Running https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project !1!! :-)