Hi Nate,
Welcome, yeah old, I discovered GW Basic in '89 and QB45 shortly after.
We've talked about this a number of times, the difference between using _KEYDOWN and _KEYHIT.
Depends how you want to use them in a loop, and what you want to trap but I'd say use _KEYDOWN for detecting key combinations shift + something, or alternate or ctrl and use _KEYHIT for arrows or letters, more specific things.
_KEYCLEAR comes in handy for clearing _KEYHIT but is useless for _KEYDOWN which never "clears" because it only reports if key is pressed or not when polled.