Originally Posted by
Mayhem
I'll argue that yes, the tape version of disk heavy titles such as DotC were odd and necessary at the same time. Not ideal by a long shot I will say, but given Commodore's daft pricing for things here in the UK, even at its peak only around 10% of C64 owners had access to the disk drive. Which is why a lot of classic UK originated software was one load to account for being most likely loaded from tape.
Such classics include IK+, Wizball, Mercenary, Bubble Bobble, The Sentinel, Paradroid, Uridium, all of Minter's stuff, Thrust, Buggy Boy, Nebulus, Dropzone, Zoids, Arnie, Power Drift, Head Over Heels, Parallax, Zig Zag, First Strike... and others I'm sure will come to me once I've hit submit to this post...
Later on multiloads were more a necessity. Some were done really well: the fast loader for the Turrican games loaded in the next level in a minute or less. The ones for the Dragon's Lair games loaded in the next level while you played the previous one! But yes, some were very long and very tedious on tape...