Once upon a time, video games were played as they should be played - no delays between choosing your options and playing the game. 

However, a nasty habit started back in the mid to late 90's, arguably with Sony's flagship console, that saw gamers up and down the country scratching their heads in frustration at the ever-increasing amounts of time taken between putting in the game disc and actually playing the game. Here's our take on the state of this mess in the present day...

Back in the day there was no fiddling around - you put in the cartridge (blowing out the dust first if necessary, of course), chose your game mode and played the game straight away. No waiting, no fussing.

Come the Playstation, however, things changed quite dramatically. The opening process was fairly similar - you put in the disc (cleaning first if necessary, of course), chose your game mode and... well, that's where the similarities end. In many cases (yes, we're looking at you, Wipeout series), you then waited for anywhere between 5 and 30 seconds, sometimes longer, all the while musing over a beautifully painted screen accompanied by the words "Now Loading". Yes, that's right - your game, right now, as we speak, is loading. Well whoop-de-doo.

At first, the N64 seemed fairly immune from this mess. Loading times only appeared in the most unpleasant nightmares of devoted Nintendo fans, and games were smooth, rapid and responsive.

But this fragile, blissful ignorance was soon shattered as even Nintendo proved not to be immune, the port of Wipeout to the '64 carrying over the filthy loading times from its Playstation brother.

From then until now it's really gone downhill, with flagship games such as Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid 3 carrying craftily concealed loading times, hidden in wrist strap warning screens, beautiful yet drawn-out cutscenes (rather like the aforementioned loading screens) and massive delays between blasting a door and seeing it actually open. But what makes me really, really mad?

Seeing full-blown loading screens defacing triple-A titles, such as those found in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, to name a couple.

Would you tolerate this?

No? Then why tolerate it in games, especially ones from such a fine source as Nintendo?

As you might have surmised from the wording thus far, here at FullHealth we're not too pleased with these loading times, especially those found on Nintendo's systems, for which, long ago, the thought never once crossed gamers' minds that they could appear.

If you ask me, it's about time gamers stood up and said something about these ridiculous facets of days gone past - days with slow processors and creaky capabilities where blocky graphics were the norm. Let's stop being lazy and put a bit of serious thought into loading these screens into a time machine and sending them back into the past, where they belong, eh programmers?

Agree? Disagree?
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Comments (1)

	1. 09-05-2008 21:00
	Here here! Completely agree.  The absolute worst game for this is HL2. I actually thought my PC crashed the first 3 or 4 times. Registered

Carnage

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