Martin Robertson
September 3, 2009
Beeeeeeeep… beep… beeeeeeeeeep… bleeepeeeepeeeepeeeepeep. You may think I have gone mad or even lost the power to form a coherent sentence and you would be wrong. That was an accurate emulation of how every Spectrum game used to load in as we sat patiently to play the latest games. The instant hit of modern gaming was but a twinkle in our eyes as we had to wait for up to four minutes for our games to load in from cassette tapes; sometimes it was even longer. As gaming progressed and games became more and more ambitious, some even required multiple loading after finishing a section. From my own experience all of the leads connecting the tape deck and Spectrum had to be positioned exactly right and the volume had to be balanced precisely or you would run the risk of the loading crashing on you and having to start all over again.
The delicate set up for a Spectrum.
After typing in the much fabled “RUN” command you would hit “ENTER” and press play on the cassette. For the next four minutes you would be treated to a light and sound show like never before, the best part of the process being the loading screen that was slowly revealed, line by line, as the game loaded in. Some pictures were just blocky messes but more often than not we were treated to a digitised picture of Sly Stallone or maybe even Robocop. As this picture revealed its treats on screen the borders of the screen were lit up by the flashing and dancing of multi coloured bars that could hypnotise you given long enough. The lasting memory though was of the noised emitting from your television set and in built speaker in the computer. Immensely hard to describe, even harder to emulate vocally but never forgettable. Think the screeching of nails on an old blackboard mixed with the noise of a cat drowning thrown on top of various beeps and whines and you would be pretty close to what the sound was like.
This was a good game and loading screen.
An obvious downside to all this loading malarkey was that you couldn’t save a game as you progressed, all of your gaming had to be done in one sitting. If for any reason you had to switch off or were accidentally powered down, you would have to start the whole thing again from scratch with no auto save to fall back on. The games of that era were often marked on how many screens they had instead of levels, something like Jet Set Willy had hundreds of screens while others barely had ten. The playability was in how well designed each screen was and how long it would hold your attention. If you got stuck though there was always the “POKE” to fall back on, this was the past equivalent of a cheat cartridge or button combination to access cheats. Before you loaded in the game you would enter a code that started with the command “POKE” followed by various numbers, these were often printed in magazines and would grant you infinite lives or invulnerability. Games as hard and big as Jet Set Willy were closer to being easy with the use of POKEs.
The mighty Jet Set Willy.
Cut to modern times, extensive loading is all but forgotten, to be confined to the past and I like to think that is exactly where it belongs. Can you imagine playing Arkham Asylum and having to stop every while to load in the next area, it would drive you mad and would ruin the flow of the game. Resident Evil was often moaned at due to the short loading time as the door opened to each new room, I say short loading time but when the game was originally out the loading times were slated as spoiling the game slightly. We have become so accustomed to playing games quickly that any form of loading is an inconvenience that we can do without, as much as we often look through the good old rose tinted specs, I’m glad that cassette loading is a thing of the past.
The Resi door of loading hell.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:59 am
I remember doing all that. I had a commodore Vic-20 that had video cartridge games that you could plug into the back of the console.
It also could play games loaded from a cassette, provided you had the special cassette player that you had to fork over maybe less than $50 for.
The load times on those were long to say the least. The graphics were good given that it was the 80s. Thank goodness I graduated to a Tandy 1000HX which had superior graphics. Well, superior for that day, given that it was the late 80s.
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:27 am
The ‘Spectrum Screech’, eh? :D I’ll never forget it.
It’s interesting you mentioned Arkham Asylum – cos it does exactly what Resi did all those years ago :)
It uses a short animated door-opening sequence to cover the loading time :)
Difference is, now we get to watch a painstakingly detailed Batman open and walk through said door :) Makes it a whole lot less dull, don’tcha think? :)
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Ha ha ha the Resi loading door of pain!
I had a Spectrum, and there was a space fighting game (called Space Invaders but it wasn’t the one you think), and the loading screen was Thunderbird 5. Happy memories.
Kids don’t know they’re born these days.
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Hang on…the photo of the Jet Set Willy game, isn’t that the code card that they included to stop people copying their games? That REALLY takes me back!!
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Shift + Run/Stop. That was the Commodore 64 way. Ah, that takes me back. I actually started on the Commodore 16 and took a while to figure out how to load my first game.
It is amazing how games have changed amd improved so much since then. And the games may have taken longer to load from cassette but it was still better than typing in the program listings you would get in the magazines, that never worked.
The flashy lines on screen, the line by line drawing of the loading pic, the joysticks with only one button, fond memories. :D
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:51 pm
I had a game called “Give my regards to Broad Street” on my C64, and it honestly took 40 minutes to load. I wish I was kidding.
September 4th, 2009 at 8:35 am
I miss my Speccy…very happy memories indeed. Even the trauma of a game flunking out after fifteen minutes of loading has now been dulled by a nostalgic mist…well, maybe!