I wonder if the author is familiar with the PLASMA [1] language and bytecode VM for 6502-based Apple computers. That might be another interesting option to add to the comparison.
PLASMA is a really neat project! I considered it and a few other systems before settling on C, assembly and Forth. Ultimately I left it out because I was focusing on performance not size, so a byte-code VM would not be a good fit.
[1]: https://github.com/dschmenk/PLASMA