Commodore Basic is not great. In fact, let's be quite blunt. It's bloody awful. There are a number of ways around this - extend it, install another Basic, etc. Another option, especially if you're into games, is a games designer. Scope is just such a beast.

The Bible-sized pack that it comes in makes great claims for itself: easy to use, powerful, write and publish games using simple English commands, beginner and competent programmer alike... and so it goes on. So where does that leave the prospective games crafter? First of all, if you don't know the machine, you're going to have problems. Scope is a compiled language, so it has to have space for writing and space in which to be compiled. If you compile it in the middle of young Sidney, the sound chip, anything could happen. Secondly, it's primitive. Sure enough, it makes life easier for sprites and sound, but the way it handles variables and functions is hideous.

No more than 52 single-byte integers and 26 double-byte integers. This may well be adequate for most purposes but the variable names can be only a single letter. This is true for line labels as well. The thought of coming back to a complicated piece of coding after a few months and trying to decipher something like that is frightening. If you're doing something complicated than it must be easy to follow. A subroutine called 'A' is not that by any standard.

Anyone who knows the C64 well enough to use Scope would be better off buying a good assembler. After all the Peeks and Pokes of Basic, assembly language is a doddle and of a much more general use than something as machine-specific as Scope.