🖳 Loading Screen Games 🖳 #Retrogaming

Who remembers a time when you would sit and wait for your computer games to load?

Anyone who owned a Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC or an Atari 800 will remember it very well!

There were actually some disk games on the Commodore Amiga where you were also forced to wait for your game to load. This for me was especially memorable when waiting for Championship Manager to load as it had a blue loading bar that would creep slowly across the bottom of the screen as it was loading its database.  

Those waiting times actually served to heighten your anticipation for a video game and also made the dreaded Syntax Error message fill you with more dread as you knew that it was 40 minutes of waiting that you'd never get back!

I owned a cracked copy of Championship Manager 94 and it would take the best part of an hour to load up on my Amiga 600. The problem was that there was sometimes an error where the loading bar would 'breakthrough' the side of the screen and keep on going indefinitely! This meant a reboot was required to give it another go! (serves me right for buying a dodgy copy from the local car boot sale I suppose).

The one time that loading screens were made bearable though was when developers would give you a loading game to play whilst you waited for the main game to load in the background!

Here's a list of some of the most memorable loading screen games that I have pulled together so as we can all fondly look back on the days of loading screens and loading screen games!

p.s Maybe they should give us something to play whilst the latest release is downloading an 80gig download file!

1. Invade A Load (Space Invaders)

This clone of Space Invaders was used to entertain the 8-bit generation of home computer gamers who were getting ready to wait that 20 minutes for a game to load! Tea 0 - Video Games 1

2. Ridge Racer (Galaxian)

In the PlayStation version of Ridge Racer, a mini-game of Galaxian can be played as the game loads. If won, eight additional cars become available!

3. Okami (Paws)

On the PlayStation 2 version of Ōkami, the Loading screens gave the player the chance to earn bonus Demon Fangs. 

On the loading screens that contained paw prints, you were required to tap X in time with the paws as they appear and on blank loading, screens you needed to repeatedly smash the X button to fill the screen with 50 paw prints to earn a Demon Fang.

4. Crash Tag Team Racing (Burps & Farts)

Crash Tag Team Racing boasted a simple distraction to the loading time by allowing players to mash buttons and listen to various burps and farts. Simple but effective!

Did You Know?

"For twenty years, Namco Bandai held a patent (US 5718632 A), which gave them ownership of the idea of a loading screen minigame. On November 27 2015, that patent expired which enabled loading screen mini-games to be included in non-Namco Bandai games"

Can you think of any cool loading screen games that you really enjoyed?