loading

[vanhelsing]

What did people do while tape based games were loading?

[NostalgiaFreak]

Re: loading

I can't remember, but I know I never did the obvious thing and unplug the ariel and plug in the TV ariel to watch TV while I waited.

I think I just waited, or read a computer magazine or something.

[Wil]

Re: loading

A mate and I used to make giant batches of prawn crackers!

[Richard1978]

Re: loading

The Acorn Electron used to count up in hex (base 16, so it was 0-9 then A-F) so I often just used to watch that.

It was useful because errors like "Data? Rewind Tape" were common when loading.

When I left it to do something there always seemed to be more change of an error occuring.

[Austin Maxi]

Re: loading

I had a ZX Spectrum, and I usually just stared at the loading screen whilst the game was loading. There was usually a rendered title page to look at, and although it got boring after a while, it was better than nothing at all. One game I remember - 'Clumsy Colin - Action Biker' (a KP Skips advert spin-off game) has three different screens during it's load time.

[culnara]

Re: loading

Yeah, I waited

one great game I used to play was Rainbow Islands on the Amstrad cpc464
only annoying bit was when you progressed you had to press play again for it to load another level
then when you died you had to rewind the tape all the way to the start of the tape, then begin all
over again :cry:

[Richard1978]

Re: loading

Loading screens seemed to me common I remember most of the later Acorn Electron games having them.

The Commodore 64 games almost always had a loading screen.

[jason h]

Re: loading

My Commodore 64 datasette player was so temperamental that I was convinced that just by walking around on the carpet ("static is the enemy" - Wiz-Kids Tv series) would cause the loading to fail right at the end. So we usually sat as still as possible and just read Zzap!64 for 5-10 mins.

[RichardJames]

Re: loading

A very similar experience to Richard1978 only with the (Acorn) BBC B. Mostly I seem to remember I would read programming manuals/doing something else but still keeping a very eye on things as like the other Richard I found you had to adjust the volume of the tape recorder, or even rewind the tape where the quality of a tape meant the game wasn't loading correctly etc. Some of my first programming unsurprisingly came about after we got a disk drive and I quickly taught myself how to load and modify the programming for various tape loaders, so that I could port games etc over to a disk drive when we got one later. I remember the tape version of Revs 4 tracks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revs_%28video_game%29 was a particularly pain to port to disk even though I now see a disk version later existed.

On some platforms there were interactive / mini games which you could play during the loading of the main game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loading_screen

[Sharkmerwood]

Re: loading

Yep I waited too or had something to eat during the loading. The speccy sounds were annoying after a while, so I got a Commodore which loaded silently.

Funny how you remember the neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeedip sounds of the speccy 48k. Load"",
pressplay on tape......Loading

[Trickyvee]

Re: loading

I just sat and watched it too....yellow and blue stripes....red and blue stripes.....all of those 10 minutes' we will never get back. I can still hear the noise belebleblelbellebeebleebebbebe then bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee while it has a little think then bleleleebbeleebbeleb off it goes again.

[memoman]

Re: loading

just back the file up on the 1541 floppy drive much faster and less prone to crashes.Just those damm big 5 1/4 inch floppies that held 600 off kb of data or what ever.i bought 3 systems woth games and accessories one came with this drive and a stack of game disks.

[Cartimand]

Re: loading

"Funny how you remember the neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeedip sounds of the speccy 48k. Load"

Exactly! ... and that wonderful sense of anticipation as the loading screen built up line by line.

Ok, irony aside, I swear games were more fun back then though. I never managed to complete some legendary Spectrum games such as Tir Na Nog, Dun Darach, Valhalla, Robin of the Wood, Tau Ceti, Deus Ex Machina and Black Lamp, but the fun factor seemed to be far greater than today's far slicker games. How I miss my Speccy 128k - that heat sink on the side even kept my fingers warm when I was living in an unheated flat!

[darren]

Re: loading

true the element of fun is no longer in games.

i know of sites where you could get a speccy again if you want one cartimand.

some of those old speccy games where super hard.

graphics where not great on those old games but who cares.
today its all graphics,
if the graphics are not good neither is the game.

peeps i know say why do you play them games graphics are awful.
i say because i love those games graphics is just the thin layer of icing on the cake.

[Cartimand]

Re: loading

I did get a Spectrum emulator for my PC a couple of years ago, which came bundled with many old Speccie games, including one of my favourite shoot-em-ups Dark Star. I also managed to complete the classic adventure The Hobbit! Considering they only had 48 or 128k to play with, those early programmers did an amazing job, compared with the multi gb games of today. You're right about the difficulty levels back then - none of my friends ever did manage to complete Valhalla or Tir Na Nog, but PC games, such as the Unreals, Final Fantasies, Tomb Raiders etc. whilst far bigger in scope, actually feel quite linear and can always be beaten.
I'm actually not much of a gamer these days - apart from the occasional Age of Empires/Civilisation game or Microsoft Flight Sim (which the PC is ideal for).