Very much agreed on the ease of graphics and sound, and its influence on me as a student -- I wrote a version of Pong in about 250 lines back in the 90s. A single line of music was as simple as PLAY and a string language to specify duration and pitch. SCREEN followed by LINE/CIRCLE/PAINT and you had graphics. GET and PUT gave you sprites. Some of the fine people on Prodigy provided their amateur games and tutorials.

If there's a modern equivalent I'd be interested to know.