Tuesday, 6 January 2015

Favourite Speccy Loading Screens - Part 1

Back in the days of cassette-based gaming, us ZX Spectrum owners, along with our Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 owning brethren (amongst others), were periodically forced to endure mocking jibes and stinging repartee from conceited owners of the various disc/cartridge-based systems concerning the 3-5 minutes it took to load our games (you know, as opposed to the 30+ minutes it takes to install/patch/update a game before you can play it on a modern system nowadays).

The one comfort we took during this period came via the often-fab 'loading screens' that most developers included to whet our appetites. I've now amassed a fairly sizeable gallery of my favourite examples and am happy to present them before you now, for your (possible) viewing pleasure! Behold, the fifty loading screens that make up the first of what will probably end up being about five or six posts:


















































 
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8 comments:

  1. Stuart Wilson6 January 2015 at 21:53

    Good screenshots there. I've always liked the hi-res and vibrant colours of those loading screens on the Spectrum. Even better when the artist manages to reduce the colour clash with clever techniques (and that's coming from a Commodore 64 fan!!)

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  2. RetroKingSimon7 January 2015 at 00:46

    Yeah, they're pretty great huh? They only really took off in the latter half of the Speccy's life but there were still some fantastic examples. Great artwork and just for a few minutes to keep us occupied while we waiting for the games to load. Jolly nice of the coders :)

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  3. annabelt7 January 2015 at 13:27

    AticAtac! I used to love that one :)

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  4. RetroKingSimon7 January 2015 at 14:08

    Hi Annabelt, that sure is a good one, much like most of Ultimate's releases :P

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  5. G7 January 2015 at 17:54

    Always thought Batman Caped Crusader screen was one of the best.
    As a firm C64 man, from what I remember, the Codies games Bubble Dizzy and CJ had different (and better!) loading screens on the 64.
    Though I must admit the screens for Chain Reaction and ACE 2088 especially, look better on the Speccy.

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  6. RetroKingSimon7 January 2015 at 23:14

    Yep, the Batman one is fantastic, perhaps a contender for the best one of all. I never saw a single C64 loading screen growing up. I know it's strange but I didn't have a single C64-owning friend, only Speccy and CPC, but I'm sure the old brown breadbin has a good few superb examples of its own :)

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  7. John Blackburn4 February 2015 at 23:54

    Bobby Bearing was an amazing game though you might not think so from the screenshot. Isometric 3d with real phyics, hard to believe they did it in 48k. I remember queueing up for Dynamo which was right at the end of the Speccy's life and perhaps the last game by Codemasters for the platform.

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  8. RetroKingSimon5 February 2015 at 01:52

    You mean the Bobby Bearing loading screen above? It may not be a technical masterpiece but it makes me smile, so job done! Great game too, you're right there :)

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