Since your new to game programming in general, the standard edition should work just fine for you. Your going to have to learn a lot of basic skills if you aren't well versed in C++ to begin with. If you have no programming experiance with C or C++, you should definatly buy the standard edition and start making some console(DOS) programs and some windows programs to get a feel for the language before you delve into games. I have the pro edition and so do the guys I work on my game with, but im sure the standard edition is just as good for game making, especially beginner games.

Good Luck
Mike Barela

I know there are a few versions of visual c++: Standard, professional, enterprise and academic-for all three. I was thinking of getting the standard edition for game programming.. Is this a good choice.. or choose another... I'm a beginner in programming and mainly want to dabble in game programming... nothing else is of interest at this moment... thanx

the pro edition and above does have an optimizing compiler, while the standard doesn't. also, i think you can't publicly release programs written with the standard version, i'm not sure on that. i would get the pro if i were you