Multipart Tape Loading

[awergh]

So I was wondering if there was a list or something of Tape games that load in multiple parts eg You load from Side 1 and play a mission and then you have to turn the tape over and rewind to load the next mission or something like that.
I'm not particularly fond of this, particularly when I'm awful at the game and have to do a lot of loading because of this.


List so far:

APB
Bad Dudes Vs Dragonninja
Gauntlet (and its successors loads the levels during the game)
Operation Thunderbolt
Power Drift
Shinobi
UN Squadron
Winter Olympics (play one part then do some more loading except I got read errors so I don't know after that)
Way of the Tiger (the first side contains the game engine, the second side the levels)
Leaderboard "Multimix 1" 3 game pack (kixx version) (need to know exactly where on tape games are)
North & South (large gold box version) (lots of loading on two sides)
Deliverance (Amstrad Action) (load from one side and continues on the other.)
Heroes of the Lance (Advanced D&D)(kixx version) (constant interaction)

Tai-pan (Side 1 has part 1 & 2, flip side has part 3)



Part of the game on second side
Bubble Bobble (second side contains last level, code required to access)


Big Tape Games

The biggest amstrad CPC tape (and game) is Hydra from Domark : 2 tapes using 60 minutes each, totalling 875kb. loool
Second is Turrican 2 with 715kb of data.
Btw, Hydra is using 4 sides to the fullest, so 4x60 minutes of tape band.
Other biggies K7 games : Bad cat (385kb), Exterminator (566kb) => that one use a gigantic tape band (more than 60 minutes), Twinworld (2 sides, 364kb), UNSquadron 318kb, Outrun Europa 305kb, Alien Storm 291kb, Crackdown 300kb, Gauntlet III 300kb, Indiana Jones 4 Arcade 330kb, Turrican 230kb, X-out 223kb, etc etc

[AMSDOS]

I have Powerdrift on Tape, from memory I think the main part of the game loaded from Side 1 and after you selected your character and track it would load the next bit of the race from Side B. At the time I had to return my original copy of Powerdrift cause something happened with the data on Side 2 which stuffed up the track which was really annoying.

The other game which bothered me from Tape was the Blues Brothers from AA98, I'd never heard so much Clicking of the Tape Deck in my life, I kept thinking that can't be good. Can't remember if it was another one of those load one bit from Side 1 and continue to Side 2, I think it might have been. I think if games are going to be notorious at damaging Tape Decks then they should be noted as well.

[MaV]

The Way of the Tiger (the first side contains the game engine, the second side the levels)

And I guess Gauntlet and its successors loads the levels during the game.

[tastefulmrship]

And I guess Gauntlet and its successors loads the levels during the game.

I was about to say GAUNTLET; great games! I remember getting the original for Chrimbo and playing it 'till Easter!
Did the same with Jet Set Willy: Final Frontier... never did manage to complete it all!


[ON TOPIC]
Bad Dudes Vs Dragonninja, Shinobi, errr... UN Squadron, errr... (my mind has gone blank)

[awergh]

I think it depends how the loading is done on how annoying it is.
Perhaps I should separate the list on the types of multipart loading.

How many games are known to damage tape decks?

[Cholo]

Whoa that has to be a loooong list  Also do you want all kinda "part" loading games or just the ones where you can only load from one side and is forced to turn over the tape .. or do you want all the "nicer" ones as well like most text adventures and dinamic games where you play the first part and get a serial .. then a couple of days later turn the tape over load "part 2" and unlock it with the serial?
Also do note that it may also depend on the version of the game .. like the original expensive tape has the full game on both sides .. but the re-release "kixx" version splits the game onto 2 sides.
Then there is the compilation tapes like Leaderboard "Multimix 1" 3 game pack (kixx version) that contains a loader on one side and then 3 different courses all over both sides of the tape (a really hard one to load anything from as its some speedlock-thingymajic that so you need to know EXACTLY where game 3 data starts in the middel of side 2).

Anyways the "king" of tape swapping has to be North & South (large gold box version) as it has 2 tapes you need to switch all the time (one side loads start menu, one contains the map, then there is the 2 action bits on 2 different sides. Not that its a bad idea as the tapes are extremely short and much better than most other multiload games.

The Amstrad Action version of Deliverance load from one side and continues on the other.

Heroes of the Lance (Advanced D&D)(kixx version) Loads from side 1 with a nice loading screen .. and 8 more character screens. You might think you can just let it load in peace and go make a pot of tea in while its loading .. but think again .. between each screen you must press space so you are pretty much forced to site there the whole time. After that you turn over the tape and load the lvl(s). Probably a straight rip from the disc version and they forgot about the time it takes to load from tape. This game probably created more villains than heroes.

Tai-pan loads from one side including the first lvls and you have to flip over of the rest of the lvls.
The Boggit has 3 parts that load by themselves tho so you wont have to load past the previous parts to get to part 3. Side 1 has part 1 & 2, flip side has part 3.
Savage is 2 tapes but i havnt tested the loading style yet.

I remember dlfsilver commenting one of my videos about some really long games and most of them are probably multiload as well (or even 2 tape ones):

The biggest amstrad CPC tape (and game) is Hydra from Domark : 2 tapes using 60 minutes each, totalling 875kb. loool
Second is Turrican 2 with 715kb of data.
Btw, Hydra is using 4 sides to the fullest, so 4x60 minutes of tape band.
Other biggies K7 games : Bad cat (385kb), Exterminator (566kb) => that one use a gigantic tape band (more than 60 minutes), Twinworld (2 sides, 364kb), UNSquadron 318kb, Outrun Europa 305kb, Alien Storm 291kb, Crackdown 300kb, Gauntlet III 300kb, Indiana Jones 4 Arcade 330kb, Turrican 230kb, X-out 223kb, etc etc
 

[Xyphoe]

Holy crap .... Hydra???

That game was bloody awful!!!


Note peeps desperate for Chase HQ 2 GX4000 cart .... both that and Hydra were made by the same programming team! (ICE in Glasgow)

[awergh]

I think I'm after the games that have loading that disrupts the experience opposed to having the second half of the game on the opposite side of the tape, but I could have two categories.

4x60 minutes sounds like an awful lot of loading time, perhaps I should include games with extreme loading times as well.

Edited main post some more, probably need to think of better categories

[Axelay]

Oh, I was going to say something about this yesterday and then forgot, and now Cholo has pretty much said it anyway! 


But I'd have thought that generally speaking, towards the late eighties nearly every full price arcade conversion or film license, plus a few "original" games, were multi load?  Just thinking of stuff that comes to mind that hasn't been mentioned (and I'm not checking so could well have some wrong)  I think all the Renegades, Gryzor, Op Wolf, Untouchables, Platoon, Rambo 3, Terminator 2, Double Dragon 1&2, Shadow Dancer, Ninja Spirit, Gemini Wing, P47, Sonic Boom, Forgotten Worlds, Xout, Mr Heli, Ghostbusters 2, Back to the Future 3, Dark Fusion, Shadow of the Beast, New York Warriors, Vindicators, Super Cauldron, Prehistoric 2, Ghouls'n'Ghosts, Dynamite Dux... well, loads and loads more besides.   I cant imagine having tape only by the end of the 80's was much fun with the budget range seemingly dominated by full price re-releases by then.


Also from memory, Deliverance was more "multi part" rather than multi load.  Like Savage or The Vindicator, I'm sure it used passwords between the three parts, so perhaps wouldnt have been so bad off tape.  Although on disc The Vindicator made you load part one to put in the password for part two to put in the password for part three.  If the tape version did the same...

[AMSDOS]

Pretty sure if The New Zealand Story falls into this bracket, though I recall AA puting it down as a Multi-load nightmare when they re-reviewed the Budget version. I've got a sneaky suspection that Impossamole is another one of those, though I've never played it.

[steve]

875KB game and it's crap?, someone please do a review on youtube so we can see it.

I wonder if program size has grown because they were written in a high level language and then cross-compiled on a PC, we've seen how programs for the PC can grow to hundreds of megabytes, maybe compilers are the reason for these big games being crap?

[Gryzor]

I'm pretty sure Hydra did NOT take 4 hours to load even in multipart 120min tapes appeared quite late, and AFAIK were never used for software purposes (poor quality, taking a toll on the tape deck etc; the tape itself was extremely thin to be able to fit into the same case). Even if it was 4 sides (I really don't remember) it was probably 4x22.5min *max*. Still a LOT of time, but much less. I think.

[steve]

Maybe the program continued to load from tape while the user was playing the game, overwriting parts of the program which were no longer needed, like slow virtual memory.

[Gryzor]

Yet this (waiting) is not the only possible problem, as I highlighted...

I just checked a couple of compilation tapes, even they were not on 120min tapes.

Btw, I don't think you can load while running with a tape.

[DPG]

The yes prime minister game needed each day to be loaded separately from tape, it was so annoying, especially when you'd got everything right and were just moving on it would suddenly not work and you'd have to start again. From memory it had five days too.

[dlfrsilver]

I'm pretty sure Hydra did NOT take 4 hours to load even in multipart 120min tapes appeared quite late, and AFAIK were never used for software purposes (poor quality, taking a toll on the tape deck etc; the tape itself was extremely thin to be able to fit into the same case). Even if it was 4 sides (I really don't remember) it was probably 4x22.5min *max*. Still a LOT of time, but much less. I think.

Hello There, since i took the time to dump Hydra in tape release, let me confirm that it takes 4 sides with 55-60 minutes each.

If you don't believe it, just go on ebay and buy the domark compilation TNT2 for amstrad cpc tape, and dump it, you'll see, you'll need 55-60 minutes per side to dump it all.

this game has LOTS of levels, not counting the bonus levels and the shops + the ending part.

[Gryzor]

Holly cr@p. I believe you and am ready to eat my hat. i *must* find a cdt to download and load just for the heck of it! ADATE seems to be lacking it??

[Edit] Ah, here.

[Gryzor]

Hmmmm what gives? After 6 mins of loading, and right after the loading screen is up, it stops loading??

[EDIT] That was with WinCPC. WinAPE doesn't even display the loading image. When loading stops I insert Side B. This is only 18 minutes long, but again nothing happens. I did not continue loading...

[dlfrsilver]

winape and wincpc gives bad and mixed results, the best emu for tape reading is CPCE.....

[Gryzor]

Thanks for the tip mate, will try it!

[Gryzor]

CPCe loads the first side in 6 mins or so.
I then insert the second side but nothing happens... (I have autorun off, since it resets the system every time a medium is inserted).

[Gryzor]

[EDIT] Even JavaCPC won't load it. I guess I'm not destined to try it out... However, converting the CDTs to WAV through JavaCPC's option I get a total of 90-odd minutes, adn even this sounds a bit too much (side A loads up in 6 mins yet reports a wav of 15mins). Or am I missing something?