How many of you recall the days when games were loaded from tape? The collective sigh is deafening! With head alignment and azimuth adjustment to throw in the mix, it was always a gamble when loading games from this primitive media. Don’t get me wrong, the nostalgia is still strong when rewinding a tape for the fifth time and pressing PLAY to reload the same game.
When it came to loading a game from tape, your patience was further tested (and eroded) with the length of time it took to complete the load of a game. It wasn’t uncommon for games to take up to 47 minutes to load (yes, I am looking at you Arnie’s America’s Cup Challenge!). We used that time to shoot some hoops or play some cricket in the backyard. Once time had passed, we would go back inside to either find the game loaded, or that dreaded decompression screen on an endless loop. ARRGGHHH!
How could the loading be made more tolerable? Developers came up with a novel idea – putting load music to entertain the poor souls that endured long loading times. This was exactly what companies like Ocean did. Their Ocean Loader music has become synonymous with popular C64 chiptunes. It was a great way for time to pass while the game loaded. There were (Ed: still are) many memorable loading tunes, but one that sticks in mind is Jonathan Dunn’s Ocean Loader 4!
source: PeyserCommodore
Other memorable loading tunes that compensated for the long and frustrating wait of loading a game were The Last Ninja 2, Hawkeye and Sanxion.
There were also innovative loading screens and music that were entertaining for gamers. Thalamus‘ Mix-E-Load innovation was implemented on their 1987 release, Delta. The Mix-E-Load allowed the gamer to remix the loading music by adjusting the effects. Created by Gary Liddon and featuring tunes by Rob Hubbard, it provided entertainment during long load times. Very clever stuff indeed.
source: viking120373
Another great innovation to help ease the loading pain was Mastertronic‘s Invade-a-Load, a clever loading system that let the gamer play a Space Invaders clone while waiting impatiently for their game to start.
source: dwayne2005
We may have come a long way since tape loading, but the nostalgia to load games from tape grows stronger with each passing year. If you still have your Commodore 1530 C2N Datasette, take it out of storage and load up a cassette game, preferably one that has loading music.