Have you ever wondered why the ZX Spectrum never had the same loading screen for a particular release (usually big budget/film tie-in games). Well, I came across this quite recently when I wondered why World of Spectrum has different versions of the same game, but those different versions sometimes had different "encoding schemes" and its those encoding schemes that determine the type of loader that you'll get!

Here's a small guide, with examples:

• Haxpoc-Lock - Star Wars

  Version 1 (from World of Spectrum) shows a normal white box loader that loads a query box showing normal load or turbo load. The turbo load is a timer version similar to Speedlock 7 but with a progress bar instead of the counting numbers. Version 2 of Star Wars (with the same Haxpoc-Lock encoding scheme) is just the stright up timer version.

• Speedlock 7 - Shinobi

  It is a normal white box loader following with the black box loader and red/black and blue/black loading bars then a timer.

• Speedlock 2 - Short Curcuit

  It is a normal white box loader, then normal black box loader (for a sec) then as Speedlock 7 but without the timer, just the loading bars.

• Elite Uni-Loader - Scooby Doo

  Does the white box loader (twice) then a black loader with multi coloured loading bars.

So the big question is why have these different encoding mechanisms for these releases? Who wrote them and why aren't they available on all releases instead of being on certain ones? Why is the sky blue? If the answer is 42, is the question still the same? What is the Matrix??

All these questions (and more) need solving, maybe this is something that the boys over at Retro Gamer can help answer?