Why did many commodore 64 games require the joystick to be in port #2?

Question

Why did many commodore 64 games require the joystick to be in port #2?
( Despite being single-player games )
I remember being annoyed by having to unplug and plug the joystick between games.

Answer

I never really thought about that much as a kid, when I had my C-64 (we just left a joystick plugged into #2 all the time).

However, after some digging, according to Ode to Joysticks:

Port 2 eventually emerged as the default, mainly because joysticks plugged into Port 1 could interfere with the command line interface.

Which is a good point, now that I read that, I do remember that having a joystick plugged into port #1 would send bizarre key codes to the primary BASIC interpreter/command line.

Ahhhh, memories!

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