Written by British programmer David Simons in 1983, who was 16 years old at the time, it was distributed by Commodore as a cartridge.

The magazine praised Simons' BASIC's power and "excellent manual", and stated that "its price makes it one of the biggest bargains available for the Commodore 64".

[4] RUN's review was less favorable, stating that its "many powerful and useful commands … were, unfortunately, implemented very poorly for a commercial package.

And while most "standard" BASIC 2.0 keywords can be abbreviated by typing the first or first and second letters and then holding down the SHIFT key while typing the second (or third) letter after that, all SIMONS' BASIC keywords must be completely spelled out in full exactly as shown in the accompanying user's manual.

This includes the commands COLOUR (which selects the background color and exterior border color), and CENTRE (which prints text message that are "centered" on the screen), both of which are spelled as in British English and are incorporated that way into SIMONS' BASIC.