ABC Publishing acquired Compute! Publications in May 1983 for $18 million in stock, and raised circulation of the magazine from 200,000 to 420,000 by the end of the year. "Compute!'s Gazette", for Commodore computers, began publishing that year. "Compute!" claimed in 1983 that it published more type-in programs "in each issue than any magazine in the industry". A typical issue would feature a large-scale program for one of the covered platforms, with smaller programs for one or more platforms filling the remainder of the issue's type-ins. Most personal computers of the time came with some version of the BASIC programming language. Machine code programs were also published, usually for simple video games listed in BASIC DATA statements as hexadecimal numbers that could be POKEd into the memory of a home computer by a 'stub' loader at the beginning of the program. Machine language listings could be entered with a program provided in each issue called MLX (available for Apple II, Atari and Commodore hardware, and written in BASIC). Early versions of MLX accepted input in decimal, but this was later changed to the more compact hexadecimal format. It was noted particularly for software such as the multiplatform word processor "SpeedScript", the spreadsheet "SpeedCalc", and the game "Laser Chess".