Gaming Nostalgia | An ode to the compact cassette
Very few modern gamers, video gamers I mean, are aware of a time when games weren’t so easily accessible, of a time before having access to digital distribution platforms like Steam or GOG.
I’m not talking about DVDs and CDs here, nor am I talking about console cartridges, or floppy disks, I’m talking about an age before those, the age of magnetic tapes, or compact cassettes.
Now, if you’re under the age of 25 or so, there’s very little chance you’ll know what I’m talking about, unless you’re into old media storage mediums.
Compact cassettes were the mass storage medium of choice for most of the ‘80s and quite a bit of the ‘90s, when it came to music, but they were also used for a healthy chunk of time as storage medium for ancient home computers.
How do we use cassettes for video games?
Loading games from cassettes is the same as listening to a song on cassette. You line up the tape to the desired spot and then you play it.
A bunch of lines and very weird sounds will ensue for the following few minutes, and if you’re lucky, you get to play the game once it’s loaded.
Nothing could be simpler, right? (Obviously, there have been better and simpler-to-use media storing technologies developed since, but go with me on this one)
You could fit a healthy number of games up on one cassette so amassing a very diverse collection of games wasn’t hard, if you were willing to put some time into creating your own, bootleg tapes.
What were the issues of using cassettes?
There are pros and cons when it comes to using any sort of technology, the obvious issues with using compact cassettes for things like games, is the fact that if there was any sort of issue relating to the reading head of your cassette player, you were in trouble. Also, any sort of physical jolt of the deck while loading, could lead to the entire process being interrupted and you having to rewind the tape, and starting the process up again.
The other problem would be simply the amount of time required to both prep the loading and the time it took to load the game. Mind you, this was quite fast for the time since the only other alternatives were cartridges - which depended on the system you were using - or the much more expensive floppy disks. Which everybody wanted, but were quite expensive for a large group of computer hobbyists. So the compact cassette remained the lifeblood of 8-bit home computers for a long time after floppies became the standard.
This lack of flexibility in terms of access speed generally meant that you really had to want to play whatever it was that you were loading. You couldn’t really afford to ragequit very often, because loading something different wasn’t as simple as double-clicking. It was a time-investment.
What I miss about using cassettes
Short answer: the fact that they occupied physical space.
I am a very oldschool sort of geek. I grew up in a transitional period between analog to digital, so I have a lot of history with feeling things occupy space in my hands and in my life. Whether it’s compact cassettes, books, comicbooks or dice and playing cards, there’s something special about having the things in your hands.
Also, I am something of a collector - currently getting back in collecting Magic: The Gathering cards - and as such, I love to have things to see, touch, arrange, categorize and display.
I mean sure, nowadays I have my Steam and GOG libraries, and Steam achievements, and I can share screenshots of those, but they’ll never be as cool as having an entire wall, or walls, in your house dedicated to passion.
So that’s one of my random pieces of gaming nostalgia, what’s yours?
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The old days were great, but I didn't stick with tapes for long, FDD's were the way to go, I had a 64 setup just like the one above with a 1541. What a hacking platform that was.
Romania - where I was born and lived for 27 years -was behind the Iron Curtain up until December of '89, so we used compact cassettes up until the mid '90s for our Spectrum ZX clones ;). Our technology level was around a decade or more behind that of Western Europe.
It does sound so, I moved on to drives in 1984, first with the Atari 800 and then the C64.
Here in the U.S., cassettes didn't hang on quite so long in the computer world. By the time I got my Commodore 64 in 1986, the only software you could find in stores was disk software. Even when the Commodore 64 came out a few years earlier in 1982, disks had already replaced cassettes as the primary storage medium. I think in the U.K, cassettes were the primary storage medium on the C64 for most (or all) of its life.
Check out what I replied to slobberchops since it's relevant for your comment as well :)
CrrrrrrrrrrBRrrrZzzzzzBIIIIIIIIiiiiiiRRRRrrrrrr
Ahh Summer Games II. Should have made it to the NES along with Epyx World Games and California Games. Cassettes have held up physical pretty well compared to early gen CDs that peel.
You have a very valid point there. Depending on the era in which the cassettes were made, some of them are still working to this day!
That is wild to even remember time before CD’s let alone the N64 cartridge. Those things I don’t not recall what so ever. I remember people playing songs from cassettes but not trying to game from them. I once stayed up all night to record a station that was going out of business that went 24 hours commercial free for their last day. I had to get up to switch out the tapes to keep recording haha.
Oh, talking about cassettes for music is a whole other type of nostalgia article ;)
First time i see games on cassettes. Awesome stuff
I didn't know these cassettes were used for playing games o::: I always thought people used floppies but I didn't know they were expensive back then.
I learned something new thank you!