Games With the Worst Loading Times

[Speedy Boris]

CD-technology is great, ain't it? But sometimes developers don't know how to optimize it, and thus, we suffer through long loading times. I'm not talking about a few seconds here or there, I'm talking about long waits that turn you off from wanting to play the game. Here are my worst candidates:

-San Francisco Rush (PS1). Absolutely terrible. There were loading screens inbetween each menu screen, and a really long one (a good 45-50 seconds!) before AND after you race. But the rest of that game was bad, too.
-Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex (PS1). I don't like it when two separate loading screens have to be used... right after the other. It's unsettling.
-Fear Effect (PS1). Unless you know what you're doing, you'll die in this game. A lot. And every single time you die, it has to reload, which takes a good 30-40 seconds. But hey, maybe this was a way to strike "fear" into the hearts of gamers. "NO! I died AGAIN! I can't face the loading screen again! Yaaaggghhhh!"
-Namco Museum Vol. 1 (PS1). Not so much that the loading times were long, but they came up all the time, so it added up. Every time you wanted to look at a game flyer or memorabilia in the game room, it had to load. And starting a new game went through two steps: Sitting through a loading screen, flipping the dip switch to "ON" (unnecessary), and sitting through another loading screen. It added up. Luckily, Vol. 3 loaded a lot faster.
-Tetris Plus (PS1). Same as above.
-Tekken (PS1). The game starts out with a full bonus round of Galaga, for goodness sake. Granted, part of it was so you could unlock a bonus character, but still.

Share the pain.

[Simpler Simon]

-Batman Forever. It was on the SNES no less. If someone can explain to me why a cart would need extended loading times, I'd be much obliged.

-James Bond: Nightfire. The PC version. I never finished it, but in the Japanese resort level the game nearly had to pause and load every single room.

[Westlander]

Something for the PC now...
Postal 2: without the patch the loading times were painful.
Warhammer 40K Dawn of War: you can fall asleep while the darn game loads. Oh god.

[James]

FFIX - stretching the PSX capacity meant that a 4 player battle took considerable loading time. Not really really long, but when they were random it was just a little longer than one could tolerate for an encounter they didn't actually want...

[g_UnIt_GaNsTa]

Postal 2: This game is fun, but before the patch was put up/You could buy the online version, you could knit faster.

[Space Lion]

WipeOut on the PlayStation had an insane loading time. If I remember correctly, it was near 30 seconds between tracks.

Another bad loader on the PlayStation was Street Fighter Alpha. You had to wait 10 seconds between matches, and another 5 seconds after the match just to see the win quotes. I think this was also true for the PlayStation version of DarkStalkers.

X-Men: Next Dimension (PS2 version) also had bad load times. I think that one made you wait up to 20 seconds between matches when the stage changed.

Two words that gamers hate: "Now Lodaing..." But hey, at least you can stare at those words in all kinds of different fonts.

-Batman Forever. It was on the SNES no less. If someone can explain to me why a cart would need extended loading times, I'd be much obliged.Good question. The Super NES version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 had some bad load times, too. Even with all of the loading, the game still has tons of missing frames (far more than either the Saturn or PlayStation versions).

[maximumzero]

Soldier of Fortune - (Dreamcast)

I swear to god the game literally takes 5 minutes to load a level. (Which in turn takes 3 minutes to play.)

[Speedy Boris]

Another bad loader on the PlayStation was Street Fighter Alpha. You had to wait 10 seconds between matches, and another 5 seconds after the match just to see the win quotes. I think this was also true for the PlayStation version of DarkStalkers. Oh man, first generation fighters for PS1 had horrible loading times. Remember King of Fighters '95? It took a good 30 or 40 seconds for a match to start, then every time someone won, it cut BACK to the loading screen for another 5 seconds or so. This kind of loading severely interrupted gameplay.

Another game that did this was Street Fighter Collection. Four loading screens before the Collection title, then loading for the game you choose, then a short loading after the game intro, then loading for the character select, then loading after character select, then loading after the two wins/losses. Repeat multiple times. No wonder so many people would rather play the games in MAME. ;)

And let's not forget Mortal Kombat Trilogy, with the loading when Shang Tsung transformed/returned to normal.

[Eddy]

Turok: Evolution =(

[True Noir]

Max Payne - It's been slow on me.
Tekken 3 - Sometimes I have to wait for like four or five minutes.:shrug:

[mikestorm]

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind had epic loading times. Unfortunately it became one of the defining aspects of the game.

[Master Moron]

Tenchu:Stealth Assasins for PS1. I actually just played this recently. You hit start then it takes several seconds for it to load the character select screen. You choose your character after a few more seconds it loads the stage select screeen. You choose the stage and after an excrutiatingly long loading time you have the level explained to you. then after a short load you go to the weapon select screen. After your weapons are selected it takes you to a loading screen for a long time before finally loading the level.

The worst part is when you die you lose all your weapons and crap so you have to load your saved data from the memory card first and then go through all the loading times again to replay the level.

[Frank Castle]

Batman & Robin (PS1)
WWF Smackdown! 2 (PS1)

[Homesick_Alien]

Knights of the old republic.

Not so much load "time" but the lenght of the loads AND the amout of them, wish it was more like morrowind, where they loaded almost everything when you start, it was worth the wait and saved the hassel

[Kryptonian]

X-Men: Children of the Atom. PlayStation One
Resident Evil Outbreak. PlayStation 2
Oni. PlayStation 2
Blaster Master. PlayStation One
Chrono Trigger. PlayStation One

[Bryangst]

Besides anything mentioned above....

Simpsons Road Rage

[Artimus Gigan]

Burnout 3


the crash rounds usualy last under 30 seconds

the loading time takes way more than that

[Frank Castle]

Besides anything mentioned above....

Simpsons Road RageWhich system were you playing Road Rage on? I've played it on XBOX and the times were pretty good.

[Wilco911]

The Dragonriders of Pern game. The loading times were horrible on my PC until I upgraded to a 2.2ghz CPU, so I can't imagine how screwed up the Dreamcast version was. I've heard horror stories, though.

[Ickis]

Burnout 3


the crash rounds usualy last under 30 seconds

the loading time takes way more than thatMaybe if you had the XBOX version things would pick up.

[Artimus Gigan]

Maybe if you had the XBOX version things would pick up.but...I already have the garbage truck

you just can't expect me to just up and leave after making such a commitment?

[Speedy Boris]

Completely forgot about Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly for PS2. I've already mentioned how bad the game itself is compared to the PS1 series, but the icing on the cake were the longer loading times. And because of the bugginess of the game, once in a while the loading screens would hang!

[Ickis]

but...I already have the garbage truck

you just can't expect me to just up and leave after making such a commitment?Well,if you got the PS2 version I can't really help ya there,sorry.

[Syaoran Li]

Le Mans 24 Hours (PS2).

It takes about a full minute to load a race, and even longer when you want to race at Le Mans or Road Atlanta.

[Dirtbag]

WWF Smackdown! 3 (Whatever the subtitle was) for PS2. Actually, I don't remember if it was loading or saving time, but one of them was disgusting. It took literally five minutes at some points.

[Bryangst]

Which system were you playing Road Rage on? I've played it on XBOX and the times were pretty good. Gamecube and Playstation 2.

[Proto DUDE]

but...I already have the garbage truck

you just can't expect me to just up and leave after making such a commitment?
It doesn't matter. I played the Xbox version. My brother loves Burnout 3, and he said that the loading time is the one thing that prevents him from playing it 24/7.


Also, why hasn't anyone mentioned Sonic CD for the PC? That game features like a minute of load time whenever you time travel. Slowed the levels down a lot.

[Nick Biped]

Fable (XBox) - It seems to pause every time single time you go to a new map. It takes away from the flow of the game.

The Sims 2 (PC) - Whenever you're loading up a neighbourhood or entering a house, the wait time is annoying.

[Dark Vicious]

MVP Baseball 2004: The beginning loading times are disturbing but I seem to notice loading time problems with all EA Sports games, but saving a dynasty :mad: , I could watch Titanic 3 times before it's done saving.

[auto]

Turok: Evolution =( I second to that. I honestly can't see how it can take 2 minutes to load the title screen and it becomes even more painful because there's no progress bar (just that infernal spinning ax).

[Shnay]

Stuntman. Any fun you might have had with this game is greatly diminished by insane load times whenever you do anything.

Fable is pretty bad, too. The areas look nice, but the load times discourage exploration and take away from the choesive feeling of a game world.

[Daredevil_2003]

The game that sticks out in my mind, right now, is Smackdown 2 on PSX. It had loading times for everything, and they were horrible. :shrug:

[Homesick_Alien]

The game that sticks out in my mind, right now, is Smackdown 2 on PSX. It had loading times for everything, and they were horrible. :shrug:Oh ya, forgot that one! Ya, there pretty bad, half the time i would think that it froze, when it didnt, or i would just get up, get somethin to drink and come back while it was still loading lol. But ya, that ones bad too.

[Mynd Hed]

Yeah, almost all of the first-generation PS1 games were horrible in that regard. There are some examples of pretty bad ones nowadays, but almost nothing that even comes close to the average game back in those days.

The Final Fantasy Anthologies rerelease of Final Fantasy 6(3) comes to mind, as well. It wasn't so much the load times, as the frequency-- it had to load every time you entered a random battle and every time you accessed the menu, which was nuts. In fact, most of the Anthologies and Chronicles games suffered similar problems, but for some reason FF6 seemed like the worst, with Chrono Trigger as a close second.

[Ninja Murasaki]

I have every Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot game ever made. All the PS1, GameCube, and Gameboy Advance versions that is. The best are the PS1 games by a lot, because Crash The Wrath of Cortex and Spyro Enter the Dragonfly have some of the worst load times ever just like Speedy Boris said. I just wonder how GameCubes load times for these games compare to the PS2 versions, and also the buggyness of them. I can imagine what peoples minds feel like after sitting through all those load times. Like this.:confused: :ack:

[maximumzero]

Jedi Power Battles for the PSX. Crappiness aside, took a long time to load.

On the Dreamcast the game was much improved, but the loading time was still pretty lengthy.

[Artimus Gigan]

The Final Fantasy Anthologies rerelease of Final Fantasy 6(3) comes to mind, as well. It wasn't so much the load times, as the frequency-- it had to load every time you entered a random battle and every time you accessed the menu, which was nuts. In fact, most of the Anthologies and Chronicles games suffered similar problems, but for some reason FF6 seemed like the worst, with Chrono Trigger as a close second.
Meh the menus were more like a slight delay to pop-up, it wasn't anything that bad. Battles seemed typical speed of most of the modern ones, except for X-2 which practicly flew by with battles, I mean you could have a battle finsihed in less than a round and it would bring you straight back to the game.

[Captain Harlock]

MVP Baseball 2004: The beginning loading times are disturbing but I seem to notice loading time problems with all EA Sports games, but saving a dynasty :mad: , I could watch Titanic 3 times before it's done saving.

I've played all 3 versions of the game, and the Xbox loading time is very minimal. If it's saving, loading, or starting a game it's pretty flawless. The Gamecube version isn't bad at all, but the Ps2 loading times are horrible. Nobody should be subjected to the Ps2 loading times of MVP 2004. Simming a season took around 30 minutes. It was disgusting.

[Speedy Boris]

I have every Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot game ever made. All the PS1, GameCube, and Gameboy Advance versions that is. The best are the PS1 games by a lot, because Crash The Wrath of Cortex and Spyro Enter the Dragonfly have some of the worst load times ever just like Speedy Boris said. I just wonder how GameCubes load times for these games compare to the PS2 versions, and also the buggyness of them. I can imagine what peoples minds feel like after sitting through all those load times. Like this. Part of the bad loading times for WOC and ETD were the different developers. They didn't optimize the code for fast loading speeds. What was so great about Crash 2 & 3 was that there were ZERO loading screens in the game! The optimization was so good that it was almost like playing a cartridge-based game. Kept the game moving along at a fast pace. Unfortunately, Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash went back to loading screens, but they weren't TOO long. Atleast not long enough to make a stink over.

[Killtacular]

My computer is pretty good but Far Cry still takes like 10 minutes to load a level. I can go out, get lunch from the local pizzaria, grab a couple of drinks from 7-11, and get home in time for the level to finally begin.


Only to get shot 15 seconds later.

[Mog]

My computer is pretty good but Far Cry still takes like 10 minutes to load a level. I can go out, get lunch from the local pizzaria, grab a couple of drinks from 7-11, and get home in time for the level to finally begin.


Only to get shot 15 seconds later.
Really? My computer loads up levels quickly, maybe 10 seconds tops.

However, the load times do add up when you have to restart 2000x thanks to the Rocket Trigens.

Doom 3 has some long long load times, but they're far and few between like Farcry. You don't die as often, so that's a plus.

Diablo II had some terrible loading times at first, but they passed when computers evolved.

Some survival horror games had short yet numerous load times that were a pain when you had to backtrack through 10 floors.

[Speedy Boris]

Well computer loading can be pretty subjective, depending on the speed/RAM of the computer. I mean optimizing CAN come into effect, but one person's loading times could vary wildly depending on the system and setup they have. I remember when I had my old Bondi iMac, it took a good 9 minutes to start Unreal Tournament, and then it ran so slow it was unplayable. On my new iMac it starts up in 20 seconds and plays pretty fast. But consoles are constant, because everyone has the same hardware.

This is sort of a side topic, but the "fast loading" feature for the PS2's backwards compatibility DOES alleviate some of these wait times. The only problem is, for me anyway, it doesn't stay on when I turn it on. So every time I turn off the PS2, the setting reverts to "fast loading off". And most of the time I forget to switch it back to "on". :shrug: Same with graphics smoothing, though I've found that to cause emulation problems once in a while.

[Boy Wonder]

WWE Smackdown Heres Comes the Pain sucks in main loading times. I don not want to stare at Brock Lesnar for 20 seconds before the legal crap.

[Mynd Hed]

Meh the menus were more like a slight delay to pop-up, it wasn't anything that bad. Battles seemed typical speed of most of the modern ones, except for X-2 which practicly flew by with battles, I mean you could have a battle finsihed in less than a round and it would bring you straight back to the game.

Well, I may be spoiled since I first played those games back in the glorious instant-loading days of cartridges. Still, it's annoying enough that I'd avoid going into the menu screen until I absolutely had to, and that's unacceptable. Loading before battles makes some sort of sense, but what's so bulky about the menu screen that it takes time to load? That was just laziness on the part of the folks who were porting it.

[ZorBrak]

Sonic Load Ti...I mean Sonic Shuffle for the Dreamcast. They were so obnoxious it destroyed a potentially cool game.

[Jigen Daisuke]

The original Legacy of Kain for the playstation. That's the first that comes to mind.

[Yash]

Sonic Shuffle. I hated the loading times... and the fact that it was supposed to be but wasn't online was a major factor to its crappiness.

[youkai chris]

Populous: The Beginning

This PS1 game took forever to load and it took all the memory in my memory card.

[Artimus Gigan]

Well, I may be spoiled since I first played those games back in the glorious instant-loading days of cartridges. Still, it's annoying enough that I'd avoid going into the menu screen until I absolutely had to, and that's unacceptable. Loading before battles makes some sort of sense, but what's so bulky about the menu screen that it takes time to load? That was just laziness on the part of the folks who were porting it.it's not laziness, it's the change in data storage, the carts would load faster on the menus because carts didn't need to be read by a laser. Besides it was only a second or so it took to come up it wasn't like a minute or 30 seconds. Also it loads faster on the PS2 than it does on the PSX or PSOne

besides, 5 was never brought to the US, 4 in the US was the easy toned down version, and 6 had spoony bard

all the CD versions are the un-edited and translated into english(5 was not ever in english before) so even though the menus have a slight delay it doesn't in any way ruin the overall game, so the pros definetly outweigh whatever cons there are, and besides they're only 20 bucks now...

the menus in the redone 1 and 2 however really don't have any delay

so I'm expecting that 3 should be the same way

[Mynd Hed]

it's not laziness, it's the change in data storage, the carts would load faster on the menus because carts didn't need to be read by a laser. Besides it was only a second or so it took to come up it wasn't like a minute or 30 seconds. Also it loads faster on the PS2 than it does on the PSX or PSOne

Yeah, meaning that it would have actually taken WORK to develop a perfect port for the PSX, but we can't have that, so let's just slap a half-assed job on a CD for quick bucks because the fans will buy it anyway.

besides, 5 was never brought to the US, 4 in the US was the easy toned down version, and 6 had spoony bard

Actually spoony bard was from FFIV, FFVI's translation was occasionally wonky, but it was a HUGE step up from IV.

all the CD versions are the un-edited and translated into english(5 was not ever in english before) so even though the menus have a slight delay it doesn't in any way ruin the overall game, so the pros definetly outweigh whatever cons there are, and besides they're only 20 bucks now...

It doesn't RUIN the game, but it does affect the enjoyment-- enough so, in fact, that I'd rather play IV and VI in their original versions than their rereleased versions. In the case of V, obviously I don't have that option unless I resort to illegal means (although I understand that there are two separate fan translations out there, both of which I've heard are markedly superior to the official translation). Chrono Trigger was worth playing through once to unlock the spiffo cut scenes (the cut scenes in VI blew-- why use cheap crappy CGI when traditional animation is comparable in cost and looks so much better?) but after that, why wait on loading if you have access to the cartridge or certain other less moral alternatives?

And that's the whole problem-- isn't the whole point of a rerelease on a new system to offer an experience that's AT LEAST as good as the original? Of course, ideally there would be updated graphics or some sort of extras to make it even better, but there's no excuse for actually making it worse.

the menus in the redone 1 and 2 however really don't have any delay

so I'm expecting that 3 should be the same way

I haven't played them, so I don't know, but I should hope that's the case, considering they were 8-bit titles and so there should be absolutely NO difficulty in making them load satisfactorily on more modern machines.

[Dogbert]

Also, why hasn't anyone mentioned Sonic CD for the PC? That game features like a minute of load time whenever you time travel. Slowed the levels down a lot.Because there is no loading if you have the prefered speed cd reader and cpu. Even if you had a 2X cd-rom drive, it let you put everything but the music on your HDD anyway, so anyone with a 200 Mhz CPU or higher doesn't have those problems.

[Artimus Gigan]

Yeah, meaning that it would have actually taken WORK to develop a perfect port for the PSX, but we can't have that, so let's just slap a half-assed job on a CD for quick bucks because the fans will buy it anyway.



Actually spoony bard was from FFIV, FFVI's translation was occasionally wonky, but it was a HUGE step up from IV.



It doesn't RUIN the game, but it does affect the enjoyment-- enough so, in fact, that I'd rather play IV and VI in their original versions than their rereleased versions. In the case of V, obviously I don't have that option unless I resort to illegal means (although I understand that there are two separate fan translations out there, both of which I've heard are markedly superior to the official translation). Chrono Trigger was worth playing through once to unlock the spiffo cut scenes (the cut scenes in VI blew-- why use cheap crappy CGI when traditional animation is comparable in cost and looks so much better?) but after that, why wait on loading if you have access to the cartridge or certain other less moral alternatives?

And that's the whole problem-- isn't the whole point of a rerelease on a new system to offer an experience that's AT LEAST as good as the original? Of course, ideally there would be updated graphics or some sort of extras to make it even better, but there's no excuse for actually making it worse.



I haven't played them, so I don't know, but I should hope that's the case, considering they were 8-bit titles and so there should be absolutely NO difficulty in making them load satisfactorily on more modern machines.
They added new CGI to the end of IV,V, and VI
heck VI has multiple CGI things for it, not just the intro and ending.
IV yeah that was pretty weak, it looked boarderline ugly
However the fan-translation of 5 the suppsoed superior version has Bartz named Butz...so really would you want to play as a guy named Butz? Aside from that it's essentialy the same, however it doesn't have badass CGI X-Death in all his glory ending sequence and the two extra bosses Omega vs Dragon fighting CGI sequence

Also the reson why 1 and 2 were not released 8-bit was because the graphics and screen set up were ugly not to mention it had multiple screen sections for the characters AND the monsters, it wasn't just one whole battle area. It was a confusing mass and it wasn't even astheticly nice like Zelda or SMB3. However I did time the menu for IV,V, and VI it takes less than the ammount of time to load a screen in VII,VIII, and IX. However the PS2 loads way quicker you don't really notice the break(also it depends on how you have your PS2 set-up)

Besides it's always best to have somthing on the newest of mediums, even for archival sake. Carts don't last as long as CDs or DVDs if I remember correctly