Ha, I still remember playing those gold box SSI D&D games, then reloading at level-up to get a better roll. In some ways, I was much more patient back then.
I would have something to read while turns were processing in Cartels & Cutthroats or Rails West.
I always had music on, that helped. My memories of playing The Magic Candle during my senior year of high school are tied up with memories of Tom Petty’s “Full Moon Fever”, Pink Floyd’s “A Delicate Sound of Thunder” and the B-52s’ “Cosmic Thing”. Good times.
Damn. I never saw that back in the day. I first experienced the cassette drive with the first version of Flight Simulator. That would be a half hour load. Go and make a sandwich and wait. The same for the biplane sim on the other side. OTOH I had two Atari controllers taped to a chair. One on the left and one on the right. The left was the the throttle the right was the stick. My wife, at the time, thought I was crazy.
It has paradroid, fantastic! Although despite my nostalgia for it, I don’t know if I can go back and play it today without being disappointed and/or bored.
The Fast Load cartridge didn’t work for every program, but it worked for most. Besides the much faster load times, the great thing about that cartridge was that you no longer had to type in the Basic load command – Load 8,1, . – or whatever that was, I’ve long since forgotten. You could just press <RUN/STOP> and away you went.