It was a torturous process loading up games on the tape drive but it almost made the game even more of a treat to play because you had to go through such an ordeal just to get it to work! After the 8-bit Atari 400/800s of the early 80s they released the Atari ST that was 16/32 bit and also the Atari 130xe (which was also 8-bit but had more memory). Better yet they released disk drives! Although the 5 1/4" floppies didn't hold that much data back then, it was a massive step up from the cassette drive. You'd get between 2 and 8 floppies when you bought the game (depending on how big it was) and you'd have to switch them out as you went from board to board or into different areas.
Good times!
Wow! It's very interesting to read this, I believe that only a small group of people were into games, right? I've heard that it was not very common back then. Thank you for sharing this!
Computer gaming (and home computer use in general) was way less popular back then for sure. Colecovision and Atari 2600 were the consoles of the early 80s and they were much more popular. There was a certain appeal to the plug and play aspect of the cartridges on the consoles, where you could load up and instantly play (the Atari 800 also supported cartridges although not the same ones and they were much more limited in availability).
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