Last night I spent some time trying to load those tape games, using another tape recorder. Previously I didn't own a suitable cable, and it turns out almost every single computer of the day used different pinouts, so even though they don't require a custom recorder like Commodore, Atari and to some extent Spectravideo did, usually one cable won't fit another make of computers.
It struck me how many ways you can load a program from MSX Basic, only counting tape loading:
CLOAD"" for loading Basic programs
BLOAD"CAS:",R
LOAD"CAS:",R
RUN"CAS:"
Actually I think the two latter do exactly the same thing. If I had a floppy drive connected, yet more ways to load a program would emerge.
Apparently each program has its own way to load: a LOAD isn't compatible with a BLOAD and certainly not with a CLOAD. You have to check the instructions or make an educated guess which command to use.
In comparison, the VIC-20 seems very easy in this matter. We basically have LOAD and LOAD"",1,1. Press SHIFT + RUN/STOP to LOAD and RUN. We don't have to worry about if the program is in Basic, machine code or something inbetween. Especially for commercial titles, all usually were distributed either with a Basic loader part or code in the tape buffer that will self execute. But then again, the VIC is the friendly computer.
