What about the modern 68K subset still manufactured as Coldfire? Much more orthogonal, modern (as of the 1980s) architecture.
On the other hand, the cleaner, more modern architectures are easily targeted by compilers. If you really want to live the "assembly language required for performance" era, the 6502 is fine. Equally quirky is MCS-51. I've written nontrivial assembly language projects for both "back in the day".
On the other hand, the cleaner, more modern architectures are easily targeted by compilers. If you really want to live the "assembly language required for performance" era, the 6502 is fine. Equally quirky is MCS-51. I've written nontrivial assembly language projects for both "back in the day".