Graphics and sound are the most important features in any home computer and game console. Here’s what the BASIC Engine has to offer:

• True color text and graphics at 4:3 and widescreen resolutions from 160x200 up to 1920x1200 pixels

• video modes are scaled up to a fixed output resolution to get the best possible image on any TV or computer monitors

• Software sprites (up to 32 sprites sized up to 32x32 pixels).

• Scrollable tiled background graphics engine with up to four layers.

• Wavetable synthesizer and PLAY command that renders music in MML format.

• Loading and saving of most image file formats to and from video memory, including PNG and JPG

• Insanely great custom text fonts specifically made for the BASIC Engine by Damián Vila

• Ability to record video and audio output without performance impact directly to SD card; if you connect a USB microphone before starting the recording you can add your commentary right then and there.

Engine BASIC is old-school. Lines have numbers. GOTO 12*32^whatever is a valid command. (Seriously, it is.)

But when you have programmed for more than a certain amount of time (an hour for some, ten years for others) it will happen to you that you look at a program and don’t understand what it does. Even though you wrote it yourself. That’s the point at which you will begin to appreciate some of these not completely traditional features of Engine BASIC:

• Structured programming constructs (DO/LOOP, WHILE/WEND, IF/THEN/ELSE/ENDIF blocks).

• Labels and named procedures with local variables.

• Numbers are double-precision floating point.

• String and numeric list types (particularly useful for game programming).

• Escape codes for PRINT, similar to the control characters in Commodore BASIC.

• Event handlers (sprite collision, end-of-music, errors, game controller input).

Programming is about telling a machine what to do. But you need to do the telling, and you need to stay on top of what you told it. These features help you with that:

• A "screen editor" similar to Commodore BASIC’s allows you to manipulate on-screen code and commands directly, while also permitting scrolling within the program in memory. Whatever is written on the screen, wherever it is located, you can just move the cursor there, change it, and press Enter, and it will be executed, or saved to memory.

• Syntax highlighting and automatic indentation in LIST command. It is inconceivable to me how anybody, including myself, could ever get anything done before syntax highlighting.

• Loading of programs with or without line numbers. Engine BASIC programs have line numbers, but if you don’t want to have anything to do with them, you can write your program without. Engine BASIC will just make them up when loading it, and remove them again when saving it back.

• HELP command provides a built-in reference for all elements of the BASIC language. I use it all the time, even though I wrote most of it myself.

• A number of classic UTF-8 text editors are included; the default editor is JOE, the editor I use. It’s the best editor. That’s why I use it. If it weren’t the best, I wouldn’t use it. qed. If you, however, have problems with elemental logic there are various other options included, such as mg, nano, uemacs and vim.

Engine BASIC speaks your language. It is available in English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese, with all system messages and help texts translated. National keyboards layouts for all supported languages are available.

Unicode and UTF-8 are fully supported by Engine BASIC. The built-in fonts support various alphabetic scripts as well as Japanese kana. Kanji fonts are loaded as required. A basic Japanese input method is available.

Engine BASIC has a ton of features out of the box, but if you’re like me you will always think: "But what if it could do…​?".

If you’re also like me, you are a professional software developer and know that feature creep is the black plague of software engineering. To resolve this dilemma, Engine BASIC provides a module framework.

It is possible to extend the Engine BASIC system with custom modules programmed in C, assembler or (with external tools) C++ and other compiled languages that are loaded at run time, giving you endless possibilities to augment its functionality: new BASIC commands, graphical capabilities, device drivers, utility programs, new input and output methods, ports of programs from other platforms etc.

An extensive API is provided for extension developers, consisting of standard library and Engine BASIC-specific functions. An on-board C compiler makes it possible to develop extensions (or any other programs) on the BASIC Engine itself.

Such modules (and Engine BASIC itself) can be debugged from the Linux support system using an on-board debugger via the serial console or an SSH connection to the board.

The modules directory in the demos repository provides examples showing you how to use the API. It also shows how to cross-compile modules on a different computer for projects that require a well-optimizing compiler for maximum performance.

The Lua language and the SAM speech synthesizer that were built into the firmware on the classic BASIC Engine platform are now provided as modules.

• Z-code interpreter for playing interactive fiction games. It’s just mandatory.

• Customizable color scheme, start-up screen mode and font.

• A switchable video filter gives a choice between crisp integral scaling and filtered (but full-screen) output.

• An automated test suite adapted from Bywater BASIC makes sure that the BASIC core always works as intended.