I remember being very impressed by the minigame loader on _Joe Blade II_ but here's the thing... in my memory it wasn't Pac-Man. It was something else. Possibly a tile-matching game of some sort, but definitely NOT an arcade conversion. I've looked all over the place to see if there was an alternate release, but the only copies I can find all have Pac-Man as the loader. I'm beginning to think I've Mandela Effected myself on that one. The _Manic Miner_ "animated" loading screen had absolutely blown my mind a few years earlier until I realised what a simple trick it employed, so when *actual* animated screens started to appear, followed by *interactive* screens... I thought these people must be wizards. My favourite non-custom loading screen is probably _Athena,_ from the era when graphic artists were mastering the techniques of reproducing poster art while minimising attribute clash. It was amazing how much detail could be crammed into 6¾ kilobytes by a talented artist. Hat-tips to _Midnight Resistance_ and _Firefly_ for the same reason.

I'm glad the Technician Ted one made the cut, because that blew my tiny little mind as a kid. I didn't think the Speccy was capable of doing things while it was loading. But the one that really impressed me was "Thrust" which mimicked the BBC Micro's block loading system on the Speccy, so if there was a loading error you could just rewind a second or so and have another run-up. Genuinely useful.

Moonstrike with the 'Movieload' was definitely an interesting one, although to be honest a lot of the Speccy loaders were entertaining, even when they were primarily designed to stop people copying the tapes.

Fabulous look at what, perhaps, many Spectrum users had subconsciously taken for granted. I had a top loading tape player with a broken play button, so I had to jam a pencil into the play mechanism and hold it there for the game to load, which was stressful to say the least - for a 12 year old anyway. I can’t express the joy I felt when a game would load properly. And if it “loaded before dinner was ready..” it was a huge bonus. Rambo is a great example of a screen that got the anticipation levels up to 11, although Green Beret was probably my personal favourite.

Some great screens there. The loading screen could almost be a trailer for the game. Mr. Thorpe's screens were classics.

I honestly 100% remember threatening my speccy - "If you dont load this f-ing thing this time, I'm throwing you out the window"... It worked 9 times out of 10. I Also remember that speccy mag with Dustin on it, but I cant remember loading screen.. Now I have to hunt it down to see if i remember playing it

A Mekon's t-shirt zips up at the back.

Top 5 Specky loading screens… LOVE IT! 😂 Such memories.

Thanks for including Robocop and being so nice about it, the cheque is in the post.

This is good nostalgia! A Pretty loader screen and hopefully a nice bit of music (C64 memories mainly for me) was always a great mood setter indeed. Nice to see some really well done Speccy ones. Thankfully now you have those preserved tape-to-digital files that allow you to re-live the tape experience without having to worry about a load error.

A good and entertaining look at the loading screens, messages and even that little Pac-Man clone during loading on the Spectrum - all very good to the eye and I'm sure everyone has fond memories of different loading screens and the artwork within. Keep up the good work! I'd love to see you do a follow up with Commodore 64 loaders - you have loading screens, but also several with iconic loading music (The Last Ninja, Last Ninja 2, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Sanxion, Retrograde, the Ocean loaders), some with games that played during loading (Invade-a-Load, Load'n'Play, Micropainter) and some where you could mix the music when loading (aka Mix-e-Load, used in Delta and Hawkeye.) There was even the innovative loader for Dragon's Lair and its sequel Escape from Singe's Castle, which loaded the next level whilst playing the current one. So plenty to go at there.

On the C64 we had Invade-A-Load, a Space Invaders clone you could play while waiting for your game to load. It was on a few different games, but I can't remember specific ones.

@Seb's Place GOD I am sad... Dan Dare's Enemies were not the Mekons... That was THEIR LEADER... The Mekon... They were THE TREENS... Go on, You know you want to shout it... NEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRD!!!!!

Renegade was my favourite. I loved the cassette art and the loading screen was in a similar style. What a game, too!

I always liked the Code Masters loading screens, especially Treasure Island Dizzy's.

Game Over is my favourite loading screen😱

Great idea for a video and as ever really well paced and put together. Keep up the good work with your channel!

Im surprised countdowns were not more frequently used. Would have helped with knowing how long you had to stay perfectly still to please the loading spirits 😂

Astounding. Im a C64 kid but really into other British computers such as the Acorn Electron abd BBC. I touched a speccy only once as a kid, wrote a basic program for a mate. I recently bought myself the same machine i borrowed off him, a Spectrum +2. I'll make sure to check out several of the games here as I'm really just starting to look at my +2

Deathwish III,f-16 Combat Pilot,,Trantor.....those 3 loading screen are just on top of my head....

The first impressive loading screens I saw was Halls Of The Things (1983), loading the screen AND the attributes at the same time, and Fairlight (1985), with it's countdown timer, colourful art and a belting tune when it loaded. They were both very early games.

I find myself using the tape loader simulation feature on my Spectrum Next as I think loading the game is an important part of the experience of enjoying Speccy games. It also gives you time to boil the kettle and fix a cuppa. One of my personal favourites it Skool Daze with the angry headmaster looming in the doorway. One of my favourite Speccy games as well.

I used to love any Ultimate release loading screen. I do remember being very excited when games began having different coloured loading bars round the edge rather than the blue/red then yellow/blue.

what is nuts about tape loading back in the day, especially on the speccy was because it actually played to sound out through the speaker which you were forced to sit and wait and listen to while doing other stuff in your room while it loaded. The actual loading tones would get embedded in your head the way a song does if its on the radio all the time. To the point that you knew which version of speedlock or whatever fast loading process was in action or when certain tonal patterns started you knew it was loading a screen (especially the attributes part lol), about to finish loading or it had errored leading to rewinding the tape and start loading all over again... Weirdly I think Cassettes were the last widely used storage format for computers where you had a good idea of how much space was left to store more stuff by just looking at it and seeing how much reel/spool was left vs the capacity. i.e 30/60/90 etc... minute cassette

Huge fan of loading screens, so nostalgic for us old f@rts. Most of my favourites were copies of bob wakelin covers. Renegade, where time stood still, batman. But I was also impressed with nonteraqueos.

As ingenuous as these loaders were, I always felt a bit nervous when they lines weren't active at the side, made me feel like it wasn't loading (as this often did happen). Also recall loading screens looking very iffy sometimes as though they were bugged (again sometimes they were other times it was the style choice). Oh and nice one on your own loader there very cool.

Rigels Revenge had an insanely difficult puzzle right at the start that had me stumped for hours! Ooh the flashbacks! As for my suggestion for top nostalgic loading screens. I'll go with Tetra Cresta, Gauntlet, The Last Ninja, Saboteur, Skool Daze/Back 2 Skool and finally Ping Pong. These aren't the greatest loading images, just one that take me right back.

Oh man, some of those brought back memories. There was one game I can't remember now, that had some sort of fast loader that made moving patterns in the border which was pretty cool, because you can't actually draw in the border it all has to do with persistence of vision and timing. I know I am gonna sound like a stuck record here, but another cool thing about Dark Star is how they managed to draw shapes in the border when you are in the menus, effectively giving the impression of larger screens. Those Design Design boys really knew their speccy, which is odd because they used to write the games on something else to run on the speccy.

To this day Chronos stays in my memory

Great examples of Spectrum loading screens that as you say determined in your mind what sort of game you were about to get. These screens like the artwork on the cassette were part of the overall package which sadly has been lost by time.

I liked that Quasitron gave you a background story while loading - and a cracking game :)

Oh...those goosebumps when you know nothing about the game, but the loading screen is so cool that your expectations rocket to stratosphere🎉 I remember the first time I saw that space trooper for the cracked version of the Exolon game. And that was the case, when the game didnt dissapoint! I played Saboteur just at the peak of my Martial Arts/Ninja -mania, so the loading screen captured the imagination and tortured with waiting as well. Again the game turned out to be a hit. Fantasy World Dizzy had a great loading screen too😊 and again, the fairytale adventure it promised was there!

Fred was on of my favourite loading screens

Awesome video! I loved Locomotion back in the day.

Visually, the later release of STREETHAWK had a pretty awesome looking loader. It was a recreation of the game cover 👍🏼

Spectrum loading. Something you enjoy in full once on emulation every few years, and thank the Lord you can skip it nowadays the rest of the time 😂

Wonderful stuff. Joe Blade II really was a cracking game for the price. Now as to Loading Screens... Lords of Midnight, Times of Lore and War in Middle Earth stand out for me!

I always loved the way Brian Bloodaxe loaded. Once the loading screen was up and the code stopped loading. It would take you to the 1982 Sinclair screen error screen, which was fake. Then some text appears to tell you the game is full of "Primary Imbalance" On first loading the game in I thought it hadn't worked properly. Very clever joke.

I used to like harrier attack, the harriers on the loading screen would fire misses once loading was complete. Thanks Seb

Renegade. Brilliant game obviously, but the loading screen was great too. I always wondered if the guy at the front's green Mohawk was on his head or his hat!

Those were the days, you could read the instruction book, glare at the azimuth alignment head of the tape deck, daring it to mess about, make a cuppa. EDIT: Wow - hadn't thought of Dustin in yonks - great covertape, and felt very satisfactory to escape the jail and complete the game.

Loving the horror Top Trumps on the wall :)

I used to love manic miner...and Chuckie egg!...jetpack...

The sound of my childhood.

Fun fact: the Locomotion animated loader is not actually a loader. You can stop the tape during the puzzle-solving bits and the game will still start afterwards!

You are my favourite game related channel....on unrelated note mekons shirt must open from the back l

I know I played a loading game, but for the life of me I can't recall the title - pretty sure it was on the 48k Spectrum...

10:56 I can't decide whether that image is amazing, or just plain horrifying 🤔🤣

Fairlight II had a nice loading screen.

This was the thing loading games from tape taught you.... Patience... More people now days need a speccy or C64

Being more c64 based at the time, I have fond memories of invader load and mix e load for various games as they loaded. However, now, No matter what 8 bit title I play. be it speccy, amstrad or c64, I simply no longer have the time to sit and wait for a tape to load and really love the various sd card solutions I have for each system. I cannot go back to tape loading.

love it!

I think 👽 clothes fasten at the back so are put on like a reverse coat. Or are a super flexible meta material, offering benefits beyond simple clothing? 🧐🤔

The Locomotion loader is interesting in one aspect. Its a Cheat! An impressive cheat, however, I got involved in a Twitter discussion a few years ago when some one asked how it was done. I have done some Z80 in the past and even a minor bit of loader customisation and decided to investigate. What I found was that the sliding blocks screen program once loaded simulated as if it was still loading data and the cassette has noise on it as if it was loading in BUT it isn't real program data. If you use an emulator (or real hardware) and pause the tape at some point when the screen is sliding the blocks into position it does not crash, in fact it continues as though you haven't paused the tape. If you then unpause the tape it continues and the sliding blocks program will finish and wait (because you paused the tape) for the fake noise to finish and then it will load the real game data. I am sure at one point in the Twitter discussion one of the people involved in the game confirmed my analysis of what was happening.

There was another Load-a-Game, a space invaders game to play when loading the game. For the life of me can't remember which game it was on.

Spanish games from software houses Dinamic and Topo Soft had generally great covers and loading screens from renowned artists Azpiri and Luis Royo. besides great graphics on Spectrum. Unfortunately they were also extremelly dificult to the point of being unplayable..

I remember my mate had a C64, and one game let you play a really good Space Invaders clone while it loaded. Any idea which game that was? Also, have you ever heard of any non-static CPC loading screens? I grew up with one, and none of my games had anything but a still image.

Great video sub enjoy this and yes it's one of my favourite things the way the games load for instance the many different types of speeds that was used and one of my favourite is the game glass unusual custom loader with a reasonable good loading screen , you should do a poll on the best to worst loaders I think the Firebird bleep loader would win hands down😂😂😂

Bladerunner and Vectron were my faves.

If you used the counter for the load time you could break into the games code just before the load ended i did this a lot and recoded games to see what would happen, my friends dad had the disk drive and the printer..

It’s not easy to have a loading game ;) but we managed it :)

cool video

2 of my fave is Kung Fu Master and Cobra

Half of the loading times was waiting for the loading screen to load, they were nice but such a waste of time. The BEST loading screen was AMC on the Amstrad CPC, it was such good artwork, plus it had a game of Mastermind to play while it loaded.

I have more experience with loaders on the Commodore 64. They sometimes had music. One game (I can't remember) but have tried it, it had a loader game, space invaders rip off. I have had some experience with the speccy but not as much as any Commodore system. When people say loading times are long, the don't actually know what they are talking about. I have modern systems that take longer with loading or getting into the actual game.

Loading times on some PS4 games aren't any better, GTA Five takes so long I can get a bus 12 miles to Tesco for shopping and back home and its finally just re started the level I'm on 😄👌

The days I'd waste loading games only for it to hang in the last 10seconds. Hoping there' would be a different outcome after the 10th time of trying.

you might of seen tron the 1983 version being roughly the same age.

There's a game that has text on screen that is continually updated do you know the game?

I remember joe blade 2.. and HATED it as 9 times out of 10 it wouldnt load due to the game loader..

Fairlight. think it was the first timer loader i saw.