Commodore BASIC V2
More info
- Type
- BASIC dialect
- Creator
- Microsoft
- Released
- 1982 (Commodore 64)
- Platform
- VIC-20, C64
The stripped-down BASIC dialect bundled with the Commodore 64 — so limited that every scrap of graphics and sound needed PEEK and POKE.
A variant of Microsoft BASIC that Commodore once licensed for a lump sum of around $25,000 — no royalties, which is exactly why the same interpreter stayed put in the VIC-20 (1981) and the Commodore 64 (1982) even though later Commodore machines shipped versions 3.5 and 7.0. The company simply didn't want to pay more.
V2 knew nothing about the SID or the VIC-II: there were no commands for sprites, sound or hi-res graphics. To reach the hardware you had to POKE registers directly or drop into machine code via SYS. The limitation was a grim blessing — a whole generation learned assembly precisely because BASIC couldn't do the job.