Family BASIC
1984 programming cartridge
Family BASIC is a consumer product for programming on the Family Computer video game console. Family BASIC was launched on June 21, 1984, to consumers in Japan by Nintendo, in cooperation with Hudson Soft and Sharp Corporation. A second version titled Family BASIC V3 was released on February 21, 1985, with greater memory and new features.
Overview
The first edition of the Family BASIC application cartridge is bundled with a computer style keyboard and instructional textbook, and requires a cassette tape recorder to save user-generated BASIC programs. Programs can be saved using any cassette tape drive, such as the Famicom Data Recorder. Family BASIC was not designed to be compatible with floppy disk storage on the Famicom Disk System and the Disk System's RAM adapter requires the use of the Famicom's cartridge slot, which prevents using the slot for the Family BASIC cartridge.
Family BASIC includes a dialect of the BASIC programming language enhanced for game development. Its HuBASIC command set is extended with support for sprites, animation, backgrounds, musical sequences, and gamepads. Several visual components of Nintendo games, such as backgrounds and characters from the Mario and Donkey Kong series c. 1984-1985, are Family BASIC development componentry, or appear in premade Family BASIC games.
Like Integer BASIC and Tiny BASIC, the Family BASIC interpreter only supports integers.
The public source identifies “Family BASIC” as 1984 programming cartridge. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Family, BASIC and programming.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3066239. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Family BASIC” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.