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It's traditional:) The original machines with simpler hardware largely converged to BASIC, so it's a nice benchmark for "is this a Real Computer™"

Hardware didn't really play a factor.

Every machine ran BASIC. If your machine didn't, it was weird. For a while it seemed like BASIC was going to become the universal computer language.

IBM even produced a computer that had both AP/L and BASIC built-in.

> If your machine didn't, it was weird.

Aha, step forward the Jupiter Ace...

Hey! Don't forget the French Micronique Hector HRX (1983) which had only Forth in ROM, and the MX (1985) which had both Forth and BASIC in ROM. They can both be emulated in MAME.

I've never seen one of those before! Easy to see where the Amstrad CPC464/Spectrum +2 got the design cues from though, eh?

A lot of machines based on this CPU booted a ROM that ran a BASIC. It seems more of a challenge than running a Forth.

Most home computers from the 8bit era shipped with basic on the ROM, and people used it for memory mapped hardware access with peak and poke commands. It was basically the operating system for some of these computers.