The Raspberry Pi Pico or the Arduino RP2040

For VGA output, I was looking at either using a RP2040-based solution or a FPGA (likely the TinyFPGA BX). After giving it some more thought, and doing as much research as I could, I think I've settled on going w/ a RP2040 implementation. The reasons are:

1. Price: Even the Arduino is less expensive that the TinyFPGA
2. RAM: The RP2040 includes more RAM than the TinyFPGA
3. Documentation: There are a lot more tutorials and projects already using the RP2040

This leads me to the next major decision: which RP2040 option to use?

Since I'm already including a different Arduino chip on my board, it would be nice to not have Yet Another Development Environment, and use the Arduino RP2040 Connect. Unfortunately, programming PIO on the Arduino is kinda wonky, requiring you to "compile" the PIO code using picoasm and then pull that resulting file into the Arduino IDE project. Workable, yes, but not ideal. Also, almost all PIO code assumes the Pico, and its pin layout. Do I really want to worry about that?

I also like the Arduino because it's a smaller, more standard form factor, which means it is easier to find chip sockets for it. But unfortunately, it is the more expensive option, by far, and includes functionality that I really don't need.

The Pico however is super cheap, and has a ton of already existing code and tutorials I could leverage. Its DIP size is weird, but that's just being picky. And from what I hear, the later versions of the Arduino IDE support the Pico natively (as a board). So maybe the answer is easier than I'm making it seem.