A 214-page teardown of how Commander Keen made a 1990 PC scroll like a console (forgottenbytes.net)
The book covers the 80286, EGA hardware, the engine architecture and the CGA port, with source on GitHub and a free high-res PDF. The author calls it a return to debugging C and assembly as a teenager.
The context one reader added is the real lesson: dedicated console hardware rendered sprites for free, so a 'more powerful' PC had to invent tricks to fake what a SNES did in silicon. Several others noted the site looks a lot like Fabien Sanglard's.
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