(Warning: This blog is one of those; “Old Woman Yells at Cloud” rants. So take my opinion with a grain of salt before jumping to the conclusion. This has me talk about my mixed feelings on using saved states and some self-ableism.)
Ahhh, emulated video games, it’s one of the Internet’s greatest gifts to mankind. It allows you to play some of the video games you couldn’t play growing up, for various reasons. And you don’t have to pay over $100 for the cartridge (that is if you own the console to said game) and risk the chance of it not WORKING!!
Of course, emulated video games can also cause legal issues since you’re “technically” playing a pirated game and some gaming companies like as Nintendo, don’t like that. So they’ll try to shut down websites that host emulated games whenever they can and say that they did this in order to protect their IPs from “bad actors”.
Whatever the case, I’m happy that there’s an option to play some of the older games that you were too young to play with, but you can’t afford to get the console that game originally came from. Like one of the first emulated games I played was Super Mario RPG: The Seven Stars for the Wii U Virtual console (back when Wii U eShop used to be online) and it was a great experience!
But my first emulated game I played on my laptop was Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Unite, a late Game Boy Color game that I could never beat as a kid. Playing the game for the first time in years and finally beating the game, made me happy as there’s now a way to play old games that I could never beat for whatever reason.
However, one of my “biggest” gripe with emulated games is that they have save states, which make games easier than before. Now before you go after me, I think save states are a GREAT THING and it make older games accessible! It’s just I feel like I’m cheating whenever I use them because it’s not how gamers did it back in the old days.
Like back before Internet was common in households, you have to buy a physical guidebook in order to beat the game. Then there’s the fact that you actually have to write down the passwords in order to continue the game you’re currently playing and hope to God you don’t lose that piece of paper. Oh and don’t get me started on some games that have limited CONTINUES and hope that you “git gud” so you don’t lose all of them and you’ll end up having to start over from scratch!
With save states, you don’t have to worry about memorizing the passwords (or you can look up the passwords themselves on the online walkthroughs), what to do next in the game and using all of your limited continues because you suck at the game. Just make a save states and call it a day. I feel like we have it easy these days, compared to nearly 40 years ago back when video games were supposed to be HARD!
I get it why as back in the 80s and the 90s, people used to rent video games from rental stores and you can only have them for a week or two before you have to return it. Then you hope the next time you got to the rental store, you hope that the copy of said game is still there and that your save file is still in tack. For gaming publishers, this was a great way to make money! Just ask Disney as they made The Lion King and Aladdin, as hard as they can because they knew people were renting their games!
Thankfully, modern games are not as hard compared to the older games. But it doesn’t stop some from making actual hard modern games, just for the sake of making them challenging.
But still, I’m glad save states are a thing because they helped me out a few times. Such as last year, where I finally played Super Mario 64 and let me tell you, save states was a blessing in disguise when you get to the latter stages. I remember having to use them in order to get through the ice bridge on Snowman’s Land because that stupid snowman head keeps blowing me down!
Another example of me using save states is during the Gorman Brothers race in Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (which I beat last month). Like, I don’t remember the race being hard in the 3DS remake, but it was in the original version. It was so bad; I had to save state near the end of the race and hope for the best!
I also use state states when I played SpongeBob SquarePants: Super Sponge (PlayStation) and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (Game Boy Advance), two childhood games that I never beat growing up and I did this year thanks to emulation. I mainly use them on the latter stages, where you have a higher chance of falling off the platform and you end up losing a life.
However, there were a few emulated games that I didn’t use save states. I didn’t use it in Kirby's Dream Land (Game Boy); Mario is Missing (SNES) and even Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak, I didn’t use it. I almost didn’t use save states in Luigi’s Mansion, expect for two times which was to beat that ghost grandma’s minigame and the final boss (which was actually hard)!
At the end, I think I’m being harsh on myself whenever I should use save states. Mainly it’s because of my slow processing speed and my lack of eye and hand coordination, which make some gaming genre, like platformers and some action-adventure games harder than it should be. Especially when I try to play older emulated games, where they’re hard on purposely and was very frustrating. That’s when save states come in and try to make my experience playing those games, better. Like it won’t some of the time, but at least it’s better than when you have to do it back in the old days.