How many classic Vic games were fast-loaders?

[beamrider]

viewtopic.php?t=9770&start=52

related to the above thread, but I didn't want to take it off-topic.

Just wondering how many games were actually sold as fast-loaders on the Vic. I don't seem to recall any, but I did trade-up to a C64 in late 83.

[srowe]

I think Bewitched by Imagine was.

[Mayhem]

I got a couple, one version of Anirog's Jump Jet did

[Mike]

These are straight from a spreadsheet cbm_warrior (also active in Forum64) sent me some years ago:

Anirog: Flight Path 737, Jump Jet, Las Vegas 20, Max (confirmed! ... load time around 5 seconds), Minipedes, Skramble, Gunslinger (as Anirog - Omega, re-release of High Noon)

HES: Alphabet Zoo, Face Maker, Kids on Keys, Shamus, Story Machine, Turtle Graphics

Kingsoft: Tom

[RJBowman]

Most ran on the unexpanded VIC and were smaller than 3K, so there was less need for fastloaders on the VIC than on the '64.

[Mike]

Most [...]

I did a quick count of the *.TAP files in Arma's archive and came up with these numbers:

• 247 for unexpanded VIC-20,
• 13 for +3K RAM expansion,
• 43 for +8K RAM expansion,
• 56 for +16K RAM expansion.

I didn't count in two compilations, and where multiple memory configurations were noted, I picked the lowest one.

Now while the unexpanded VIC-20 tapes for sure are in the majority, the number of tapes for +8K and especially +16K expansion is not zero.

Given that of those C16 tape games I got a little later, all of them had a turbo tape, it is at least somewhat remarkable only a few +16K tapes on the VIC-20 used a turbo tape loader.

[beamrider]

Is it because they didn't figure out how make turbo-loaders until later into the Vic-20s life, say mid 83 onwards, by which time the majority of Vic commercial releases were already out?

[Mike]

In CSDb, tlr cites "Turbo Tape 64" from 1983 as "the mother of all tape turbos", which - once the 'technology' was available - should have been quite easily ported to the VIC-20. Indeed, Las Vegas 20 and the other Anirog releases are also from 1983 or later, so that supports your theory.

The HES examples I cited in my earlier post otherwise only pop up as cartridges. I'd suppose they had been cracked, and these cracks were then supplemented by an autostarting fast tape routine. Not only for speed reasons: the KERNAL tape routines actually can't cope with addresses $8000 and higher, which prevents loading anything to BLK5.