I think even more bizarre is rewinding games when you'd finished, or fast forwarding to a particular point on the tape (with the tape counter) to find the game you wanted if there were several on it.
I remember having to write those down on the cassette inlays because they couldn't actually tell you where they were. It was different depending on your tape player.
We had a kick ass D&D game on the Vic 20 at computer camp. Took 10-minutes to load so we were begging the instructor to start it in time for our break.