Clearly the 32016 was a failure for all sorts of reasons that are well known. The chip was buggy as hell and late.
But it came out around the same time period as the 68000 -- a very similar chip -- which is no less complicated. And that processor was enormously successful. (From what I've seen of the NS32k it was basically... A lot like 68k but little endian and witha smaller register set that wasn't split into address vs data registers)
My point is that 'engineering complexity' can be measured in all sorts of ways. It took 15 years after that period for RISC to truly prove its way, and even then it's been heavily modified from the original "recipe."
But the 68000 dates from 1979 before even the first RISC architectures made to market. Competition was 8088. SGI for example dropped 68k range in due course for MIPS.
What makes ARM interesting to me is that it applied RISC principles in a way that worked well for lower cost computers.
Incidentally you might enjoy this from 1986. They were having the same debates back then as we are now!
But it came out around the same time period as the 68000 -- a very similar chip -- which is no less complicated. And that processor was enormously successful. (From what I've seen of the NS32k it was basically... A lot like 68k but little endian and witha smaller register set that wasn't split into address vs data registers)
My point is that 'engineering complexity' can be measured in all sorts of ways. It took 15 years after that period for RISC to truly prove its way, and even then it's been heavily modified from the original "recipe."