I noticed that the Wii U virtual console has restore points just in case if you mess up, you can load a previous restore point. It doesn't really reduce the difficulty on the games, but it's worth it if you're unwillingly to restart big missions after messing up once.
I used save states a lot on the N64 games on the virtual console. That helped me get past parts I don't like starting over, but they weren't part of the original version of the games.
Do you guys use save states/restore points? Or do you not trust them?
I create save states but I never actually use them.
I prefer completing the game the way it was originally designed to be played. Say what you will about it not changing the difficulty but a game like Megaman II wasn't designed with things like save states in mind. If you save before a hard part so you can keep trying when you mess up without having to do other hard parts again, you've just took a way a large part of that games difficulty. Extra lives and checkpoints are already good enough.
These types of games were designed so that you had to master every level to see the end. It's how they made an hour of content last for weeks or months. Saving so you don't have to do that hard jump you don't like again isn't in the spirit of the game, you should do that hard jump until you can do it with ease.
I guess using them as a replacement for the password system in some games is fine though, especially since a lot of old games used ridiculously big passwords. It wouldn't really do anything about the difficulty, just convenience of not having to input a 32 symbol password again.
I used them for Earthbound the first time I played it. I never really used it that much since I just kind of had them incase I suffered a huge loss, which I never did. I just found it easier to use the in-game saves the second time I played through the game.
In most cases, I save state whenever I think I might want to save time, especially when I'm playing blind, when the game decides to throw some cheap difficulty segments at me and even when the stakes are so high for me it would break the pacing should I ever fail. There definitely are some situations I wouldn't use a save state too often, such as...
- Segments that I easily breeze through
- The game that I master well enough
- The game plays so fast that placing a save state at the exact right spot is difficult to land on and would do more harm to my outcome instead. This is especially true for Virtual Console games, since it does take a bit too long to load the menu, load save state and return to the game, which takes me at least 5 seconds in total. I wish I could map the save and load states to a few buttons so I can save/reload state fast enough to not break the pacing.
Though, you might want to be careful when using save states in a tense part of a game, because it's entirely possible to accidentally save at the wrong time and screw your chances of claiming a victory.
I use them but only when I'm at a save point in the game lol.
Some games like Super Metroid I'll make one before a tricky platforming section, but that's the only time I ever use them as something other than a quicker way to load my save file.
