3 ms·

Ha. Thanks for mentioning video games in 1 second. I was wondering what universe had video games booting in 1 second, because I'd like to get in on that.

jandrese 4y ago
Given the rest of the paper it's probably referring to the SNES and Genesis, which is about right.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  I don't know. I count the logo loading screen (i.e. Sonic the Hedgehog had an incoming "Sega!" announcer and logo, which is at least 2-3 seconds). It's much faster than the loading times of current consoles, but not 1 second. NES might qualify, as it often "loaded" (turned on) right into the title screen.
  - whstl 4y ago
    Is there really any "loading" going on, or is that just a branding screen? Those consoles use ROM chips that were fast enough, and the Genesis, for example, only had 64 KB of RAM, so there wasn't even the need or possibility for "loading" a lot of things into the RAM like today, nor was the CPU fast enough to compute anything during boot that couldn't be pre-loaded into the ROM. I also remember some of those being totally skippable as well, not only in the Genesis but also in other consoles. On the Neo Geo, for example (same CPU as the Genesis, 68000), putting a coin completely skips the (kinda long) 7 second logo intro.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > I count the logo loading screen That's a pretty unfair metric, then, considering that said delay is entirely artificial and is part of the game itself.
  - aflag 4y ago
    What actually happens while the logo is showing? Is that really a loading screen or does it always have to be there for contract reasons?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
junon 4y ago
N64 booted immediately. Popping Yoshi Story in and hitting that switch gives you an immediate "NEN-TAYN-DOU" in the voice of a small army of Yoshis. I'd say it boots in under a second.
flohofwoe 4y ago
Any cartridge-based game console before CD-ROMs became popular did that (at the cost of smaller game worlds, obviously). The cartridges contained ROM chips which were directly 'bank-switched' into the CPU address space instead of providing a 'filesystem' to load from.
hjkl0 4y ago
Basically every console before Xbox and PlayStation loaded games in seconds. That’s not because of better software though. Games were just so much smaller then. So if a 128k game loads in less than a second, and the 4.7G DVD version of the same game takes 30 seconds, I would probably wait 30 seconds for the DVD version.

jandrese 4y ago

Given the rest of the paper it's probably referring to the SNES and Genesis, which is about right.

deafpolygon 4y ago
I don't know. I count the logo loading screen (i.e. Sonic the Hedgehog had an incoming "Sega!" announcer and logo, which is at least 2-3 seconds). It's much faster than the loading times of current consoles, but not 1 second. NES might qualify, as it often "loaded" (turned on) right into the title screen.
- whstl 4y ago
  Is there really any "loading" going on, or is that just a branding screen? Those consoles use ROM chips that were fast enough, and the Genesis, for example, only had 64 KB of RAM, so there wasn't even the need or possibility for "loading" a lot of things into the RAM like today, nor was the CPU fast enough to compute anything during boot that couldn't be pre-loaded into the ROM. I also remember some of those being totally skippable as well, not only in the Genesis but also in other consoles. On the Neo Geo, for example (same CPU as the Genesis, 68000), putting a coin completely skips the (kinda long) 7 second logo intro.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > I count the logo loading screen That's a pretty unfair metric, then, considering that said delay is entirely artificial and is part of the game itself.
- aflag 4y ago
  What actually happens while the logo is showing? Is that really a loading screen or does it always have to be there for contract reasons?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

junon 4y ago

N64 booted immediately. Popping Yoshi Story in and hitting that switch gives you an immediate "NEN-TAYN-DOU" in the voice of a small army of Yoshis. I'd say it boots in under a second.

flohofwoe 4y ago

Any cartridge-based game console before CD-ROMs became popular did that (at the cost of smaller game worlds, obviously). The cartridges contained ROM chips which were directly 'bank-switched' into the CPU address space instead of providing a 'filesystem' to load from.

hjkl0 4y ago

Basically every console before Xbox and PlayStation loaded games in seconds. That’s not because of better software though. Games were just so much smaller then. So if a 128k game loads in less than a second, and the 4.7G DVD version of the same game takes 30 seconds, I would probably wait 30 seconds for the DVD version.