Why Did The SNES Have Loading Times?

>>3781353
To load stuff from the cart to the console. I think Street Fighter Alpha 2 had like a 10 second load time between each match where the characters just stand there there while it loads.

>>3781353
Generally you see loading times when the cartridge had compressed graphics that it needed to decompress into VRAM.

Most games used some form of graphics compression, but some were using more complex compression algorithms which shrunk the compressed size smaller, but took more time to decompress.

Why didn't they just buy large enough memory chips for the carts to store it all decompressed? Larger chips for the carts significantly increased manufacturing costs for cartridges.

>>3781379
SFA2 basically goes into what this guy was saying >>3781402
The sprites were compressed and decompressed at the start of each match. It's a miracle Capcom managed to port the game to SNES.

>>3781402
>>3781970
Virtually every game for every console later than the Atari 2600 uses some kind of compression for the graphics data. This isn't some kind of technique that originated with and was exclusive to the SNES. The official dev kit for the Mega Drive even included a compression library.

File: 1486265253305.jpg (31KB, 359x612px) Image search: [Google]

31KB, 359x612px

>>3781353
Heavy decompression of level, graphic, and music data.

Also these games were often cross-platform, meaning they were probably less than optimal in their assembly code.

>>3781353

There's a tiny CD-ROM inside every cartridge

>>3782092
I like this answer the most. I'm gonna go with this one.