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You might think that the load times between the holes of Tiger Woods are too long, but as your probable elder and perhaps better, just like the old folks say, you’ve never had it so good.

Yes, those UMD discs might seem like they’re spinning forever whilst you twiddle your thumbs waiting for the action to return, but once upon a time things were quite different.

After the video game crash of 1983, where cartridge based home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision were consigned to scrap heaps, great hope for the future of the industry was placed upon the upcoming home computer industry.

Great promises were made of what machines like the Commodore 64, or if you were in Europe perhaps the Sinclair ZX Spectrum or Amstrad CPC464 were capable of. Do your home accounting, draft documents, plan your budgets, but really the vast majority of the new breed of home tech was still sold for the sole purpose of gaming.

However, this hardware didn’t come cheap. Just like today’s PCs, a Commodore 64 could set you back upwards of $700, and this was before you even thought about how you might load something onto it.

Ah yes, the 5.25” floppy disc drive. Certainly I, as a kid living in England at the time, could only dream of such a device, for it would cost almost the same amount as the actual computer!

I wasn’t alone, and as such a cheaper alternative was offered in the cassette player. Familiar already to millions as a format that was killing music, providing a crude way of copying vinyl records (ask your parents), the cassette tape also provided a way of loading data into computers. And whilst it seems ludicrous of me to suggest there are people out there who have no idea what I am talking about, those that do will appreciate that the tape passed over those playheads at less than a snail's pace.

Yes, you might think it’s a chore to wait for the next 'Oblivion' texture to load into your 360’s comparably gargantuan memory banks, but consider that early C64 titles on cassettes could and usually would take up to 40 minutes to load a paltry 64k game. In today’s terms, that’s about 20 seconds of your average MP3.

And that’s even if your load was successful. The C64 was quite reliable, but I have great memories of starting a game loading into my ZX Spectrum, only then to perform a bizarre ritual of tip-toeing out of the room, taking great care not to step on any creaky floorboard, grabbing a drink from the fridge, praying that the next 20 or so minutes wouldn’t be in vain and I’d actually be able to play 'The Way Of The Exploding Fist'.

Things improved eventually, albeit just to a small degree. Data compression techniques meant load times were reduced to around 5 or 10 minutes, but the risk of a bad load was very much still a possibility.

There’s some parallel to the present day in that eventually with memory creeping down in price along with manufacturing costs, there was a return to cartridge based gaming with the Commodore 64 towards the end of its life cycle, allowing for almost 100% load reliability and an almost instantaneous load time. But it was too late for the old dog, as those same reductions in cost and improvements in hardware had already paved the way for pure cartridge based consoles in the Nintendo and Sega systems of the late 80s, offering way better graphics and more importantly perhaps, the exclusive character licenses in 'Mario' and 'Sonic The Hedgehog' that are still with us today.

So the next time you curse the relentless grind of the spinning disc inside your Xbox, think of the patience your parents had to develop back in their day, and appreciate that you don’t have to hop on one leg with your fingers crossed just in order to launch 'Halo 3'. And what’s more, your parents will probably appreciate you not having to grab a soda every time you want to switch games.

About G4 in Canada
G4 Canada (formerly TechTV Canada) launched in September 2001. G4 is the one and only television station that is plugged into every dimension of games, gear, gadgets and gigabytes. Owned Rogers Media Inc., the channel airs more than 24 original series. G4 is available on digital cable and satellite. For more information, see www.g4tv.ca.

Tech News on G4

Load times equal good times

October 24, 2007

By Andy Barratt - G4 Canada