This week's Hot Help comes at the behest of our readers who want more power out of their gaming systems. We get plenty of letters inquiring about the technical specifications of our cutting edge video game devices. Take this message we received through electronic mail:
Dear SHELPSHOT:
I really like my state of the art video game consoles--I have them all and must have played almost ninety games! I play them for the newest and most realistic electronic experience, which makes me feel like I'm in the future! I have a pretty big gripe though: Every game I play seems to take forever to load to the next level! Blazing through titles is majorly difficult when I have to spend sometimes over fifteen seconds waiting. Is there a faster game deck I can buy to cut down on my downtime?
James G.
Cheyenne, WY
Gosh James, we're sorry to hear that your control decks aren't able to keep up with your input, but this is the perfect opportunity to discuss an often overlooked feature of video entertainment: load time! Games will often, for dramatic purposes, cut to a black screen while bits and bytes are walked along the various information caches located throughout the electronics boards of your game consoles and game cartridge packs. While energy moves at the speed of light, these pauses or "load screens" are elongated to draw out the suspense of what lies in subsequent stages, or to drive home the ultimate goal of the experience. Some games even display graphics and minigames with the load screen.
While you may just see a looping enemy screen, but this video of the loading screen shows the evil pigs tiled in such a way so as to actually function as an autosteroscopic image! By crossing your eyes just so, it can appear that the evil pigs are dancing out of the screen to taunt you, which may strengthen your resolve even in idealistic locales! This helps to raise the stakes of the game, making you more eager to progress to the next challenge. Hope that answers your question James, and thanks for writing in!
