Load Times: A Personal Flashback

It's 2008. I no longer want to wait more that three seconds for my entertainment to get with the "entertaining". I want to snap my fingers and have instant gratification for my senses. Perhaps I'm being a tad unrealistic, but when I load up a DVD or video game, I shouldn't have to wade through a cesspool of unskippable copyright warnings, previews or animated developer credits.

As I audibly sigh while waiting for the menu page of my Simpsons DVD to make its appearance, I see the room getting all wavy and blurry while a simple harp melody plays a sweet lullaby. Oh dear, it's a flashback...

Vrooooom!

The year is 1984 and I'm the proud owner of a brand new Commodore 64 setup. The large, tan, imposing brick on the table is a genuine Commodore 1541 Disk Drive. "Let the poor people load their programs off of a cassette tape for 30 minutes", I scoffed at no one in particular, "I'm going to zoom past them with this baby!" After returning six disk drives due to manufacturing errors (you thought your Xbox 360 problems were bad), the seventh one was finally the charm. "Excellent", I squeaked, "let's load up Epyx's 'Impossible Mission'." I gently put the disk in, closed the gate and typed the all too familiar LOAD "*",8,1. What did that mean? I didn't really care. With the sounds of metal scraping concrete, the ever-reliable 1541 came to life...

The year is 1985 and the game finally finished loading. I played for five minutes. It was a rewarding wait.

I realized gaming on the Commodore 64 was going to be nothing short of a major time commitment. "If I want to play, I should start the loading process while dinner is cooking and hopefully it'll be good to go once the meal is eaten, digested and pooped out", I bemoaned with absolutely no hint of sarcasm. My friend had a "Fast Load" cartridge. "Let the poor people wait for the drive to load", he scoffed at me, "I'll play three games while they're still waiting to play one." Despite his condescending tone, he offered me a copy of the program on disc. It took forever to load into memory, thus defeating the purpose.

Vroom Vroom Vroooom!

Flash-forward to 1993. The Nintendo Entertainment System and it's follow-up, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System brought cartridge-based gaming (read: no waiting) back to the living room. The Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) was gaining ground, however, and decided to pull out the ace they've had up their sleeve: The Sega CD (Mega CD). "Full motion video? More storage? Better graphics? Media with mirror-like surfaces? $300? Sign me the hell up!"

Jesus Dana! I don't have all friggin' night here!

The Sega CD was modern technology yet still reminiscent of the C-64 in that you waited a long time to play lackluster games. While "Night Trap" (the Dana Plato game I knew I would have absolutely no fun playing) was slowly loading, I imagined myself as a commuter taking a long train ride just to see a boring mime performance in a park comprised of only 64 colors at a time. Oh and my vision is limited to a tiny square surrounded by a black border. "Oh to hell with this", I finally yelled as I aborted the boot process and replaced "Night Trap" with "Mortal Kombat".

The game took a few minutes (or days) to load up but I knew I'd be rewarded with an ass-kicking good time. And it did not disappoint... until I got up to Shang Tsung. "You can't stop a fight just because you want to turn into someone else", I screamed at the game. But yet, Mr. Wishy-Washy kept turning into different people and I had to just sit there and wait eons for each new personality to load into memory. "C'mon Mr. Tsung, I was in mid-punch over here!"

Vroooo...Turn console on its side to continue.

A couple of years later, Sony introduces their ever-popular Playstation game console. Nintendo countered with the Nintendo 64, the last home console to stick to load-free cartridges. "Let-ah the poor people wait-ah for the games to load", said Charles Martinet in his Mario voice. "I'm-ah ready to go when you flip-ah the switch." But the cost and space benefits of CD-ROM storage, despite the load time, could no longer be ignored. "Boot up 'Crash Bandicoot'", I poorly rapped to myself, "while I heat up this boil-in-bag rice. Word."

Suddenly, it's the new millennium. Disc-based video game consoles are getting better at minimizing load times. Everything else is getting faster too. Computers boot up in record time (unless you install anything). Information is called up almost instantaneously off the internet thanks to broadband. DVDs have taken over and eliminated the laborious task of rewinding tapes to watch them. All this waiting time freed-up. I hope it never changes...

The room blurs again and that horrendous harp music pierces my skull. I blink a few times and look over to the TV and see that the disc menu finally pops up. "Good", I remark, "now I can start watching "The Simpsons". Oops, there's a quick little animation sequence that plays before it starts. I'll go make a sandwich."