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What games had the worst loading times?

Cassette tape games were the worst and the screeching loading sound was unbelievable. I remember giving up on a Predator game I liked back then due to having to sit through minutes of loading every time I lost a life. I think the longest loading times in minutes were into double figures The only upside was that cassettes were very easy to copy.
 
Man, it's been so long now that something like this has irked me, so that's nice. Hadn't thought about it until now, and it's not easy trying to think of things.

I feel like MGS4 and Postal 2 come to mind the most.



Last Blade on Neo Geo CD always stood out to me. It's so much more tedious than a single long load screen.

Holy shit, this would drive me up a wall. That load to versus screen and then load to gameplay made me laugh, lol.
 
When The Witcher 1 launched in 2007, most peeps had 512 MB, maybe 1 GB RAM. The game I think runs on 256 MB too?

Anyway, it was not uncommon for loading times for loading a quick save to entering literally any house/building/case to take 5 minutes each. Completely insane.

Nowadays, after the game has been patched, we're on DDR5, PCIe SSDs and even DXVK that boosts DX9 perf, loading times are seconds to almost instant.
 
I feel that you really can't comprehend what truly long load times are like unless you grew up in the 80's playing games on the C64. Especially games which spanned multiple floppy discs, or games that were on that damned tape drive.

I literally used to boot a game up, and then while its loading go wizz in the bathroom, then make a snack and get a drink, THEN do some stretches or put stuff away, ALL WHILE the game is still loading up for its initial boot! And this wasn't just a few games, LOTS of games on the C64 took forever to load.

We didn't mind so much back then though, because thats just how it was. It was normalized to some degree. Computers were still relatively new and we had no idea how much faster things would get over time. Load times were the big advantages consoles had over computers back then, consoles like the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and ColecoVision.

Starfield load times ain't got nothing on the C64 Raid over Bungling Bay on tape!!! 😂
 
In recent memory, not in length but volume, Starfield. It's every 5 seconds it's bananas.

Most games during the PS4 era I would be staring at the screen for a good minute or two after dying.
 
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Cassette games - particularly the scratch and hiss sounds of the Spectrum loading a game.

At least with the C64 you got loading music a lot of the time.
 
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Cassette games - particularly the scratch and hiss sounds of the Spectrum loading a game.

At least with the C64 you got loading music a lot of the time.
Don't forget the loading screens 🙂
It was usually the first question when me and my friend were demonstrating our latest purchase on our respective Home Micro's (C64 and Amstrad cpc) "Does it have a loading screen?" It lessened the pain of loading times.
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I remember load times in Lego City Undercover on the Wii U being so bad that I almost just gave up on finishing it.
Was scrolling through to see if someone else would mention it, but yeah, Lego City Undercover is just terrible. The worst thing is, even the re-releases including the PC version suffer from these loading times.

The modern Assassin's Creed games are just as bad on consoles, especially when they have to check for all the updates and DLC.
 
Don't forget the loading screens 🙂
It was usually the first question when me and my friend were demonstrating our latest purchase on our respective Home Micro's (C64 and Amstrad cpc) "Does it have a loading screen?" It lessened the pain of loading times.

True, loading screens used to be an art form because you'd be looking at them for so long!

One of my favorites was the loading screen for Skate or Die on the C64. Took so long they added music and graphic effects to it:

 
Blood Omen on PS1.

Utterly fantastic game and one of my all-time favorites but damn, the frequent loading and the loading times at least on the PS1.
 
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