"What's this? Two think-piece blogs in less than a week? Does this mean danielkempster is finally getting back to regular blog writing?", I hear you cry. I wish I could dub this some kind of triumphant return to the blogosphere, with updates hitting at regular intervals from now on, but that isn't the case. Truth is, the stars have just aligned over these past few days - I've been playing games that I want to say things about, and having some time off work means I've had enough time to get those things down for a change.

On Thursday, I travelled from Hertfordshire, near London (where I live) to Edinburgh in Scotland (where I don't live) to witness my girlfriend Alice's graduation after earning her degree in Graphic Design back in May. It was a bit of a trek, consisting of just over six hours of sitting on trains, but it presented the perfect opportunity to try and topple another short game off my Pile of Shame in my quest to beat fifty games before the end of the year. The game I chose to tackle was the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES, or more specifically the Virtual Console release downloaded to my trusty 3DS. Over the course of that six-hour train journey, I made my way from the familiar layout of World 1-1 to the final challenge at Bowser's Castle in World 8-4, leaping across gaps and jumping on countless Goombas, Koopas and Lakitus along the way. When I dropped the bridge under Bowser and rescued Princess Toadstool, I felt a real sense of accomplishment, but I also felt guilty about taking any kind of pride in my victory.

The reason for this? I beat the game using save-states.

For the uninitiated, save-states are a common feature of emulation software like the 3DS's Virtual Console. There, they're dubbed 'Restore Points', and they function as a kind of instant save-point. With the press of a button or tap of a touch screen, the emulator takes a 'snapshot' of the current in-game action, which the player can choose to load and resume from at any point. Their impact on playing older games is profound because of the opportunities they present. Save-states can be used to dip in and out of a game much more easily than might otherwise be possible. This is especially true in the case of the 3DS Virtual Console, where the games in question aren't designed for short bursts of on-the-go play. If you're halfway through a dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and your battery light starts to flash red, you can simply create a Restore Point and power down the handheld, safe in the knowledge that your progress will be preserved once you're recharged and ready to go again.

But there's another, less legitimate side to using save-states - because of their 'save-anywhere' nature, they can be used to avoid unfavourable outcomes and manipulate progress in some fascinating ways. Creating a save-state immediately before a particularly difficult boss or other kind of challenge can mitigate some of the backtracking or reloading that you'd otherwise have to go through. Going one step further and creating another save-state halfway through that boss or challenge on a particularly good run creates an on-the-fly mid-battle checkpoint for you to pick up from if things turn sour. This practice is known colloquially as 'save-scumming' and it seems to be frowned upon by a lot of the gaming community. Even developers recognise the potential problems it can cause, with Nintendo disabling the Restore Point feature for all the Virtual Console releases of the first- and second-generation Pokémon games, lest players use it to duplicate powerful Pokémon alongside the integrated compatibility with Pokémon Bank.

In my aforementioned Super Mario Bros. case, I used the Virtual Console's Restore Point feature to create a self-imposed 'save point' at the start of every new level on my journey through the Mushroom Kingdom. Every time I beat a level and was greeted with that familiar black start screen, I would hit the Create Restore Point button on the touch screen. Every time I ran out of lives, I would press the Load Restore Point button, instantly putting me back at the start of the last level I'd reached with one or more lives in hand. In this fashion I was able to make slow, steady progress through the whole game, never repeating a level that I'd previously beaten, and ultimately saving the princess at the end of the journey.

As a player of video games in the modern age, where so many titles are vying for my time and attention, I consider the save-state an important tool for someone like me who wants to see as much content as possible. I don't feel like I haven't beaten Super Mario Bros. - the nature of when and where I used the Restore Point means that over the course of that train journey on Thursday, I played through every single one of its thirty-two levels, from beginning to end, in entirety. This shows that I have the necessary skills (if only in instalments) to beat the game. And if I have the requisite skills to tackle all the obstacles it can throw at me, then why not make use of this tool to facilitate my time with the game in a way that spares me from frustration, repetition and failure?

But like I said earlier, because I was using the 3DS's Restore Point feature, I wouldn't allow myself to be proud of my achievement. Even though I'm able to recognise that I successfully achieved what the game expected of me, I can't escape the fact that I didn't do it in the way that was originally intended. I couldn't sit down in front of an NES with an original Super Mario Bros. cartridge and beat the game in the same way as I did on that train journey. Nor can I get away from the fact that there are thousands of players who could beat the game in that way, who can and indeed do every day, from enthusiasts and hobbyists like myself right through to speed runners. There's no denying that their achievements trump mine. But does that mean I'm not entitled to be proud of my own achievements, in their own right, and under their own specific circumstances?

I think some of the stigma attached to save-states comes from the fact that they're not a developer-endorsed tool. Incidentally, Super Mario Bros. serves as a perfect example for this, because it does contain a developer-endorsed comparison to save-states in the form of its warp pipes. Hidden at the end of secret paths in select levels, it's possible to skip large chunks of the game by 'warping' through the plumbing system of the Mushroom Kingdom to reach spots several levels (or even Worlds) ahead. Now, if I'd managed to beat Super Mario Bros. finding and using the warp pipes, but without using save-states, I feel like the legitimacy of my achievement would be much less open to questioning. Even though I would have skipped over vast chunks of content that I actually played through on my save-scumming run, using the warp pipes somehow seems less like cheating, purely because they were put in there by the developers. I can understand how you'd reach that conclusion, but that's some backwards-ass logic if you think about it for long enough.

Elsewhere on the spectrum, you have games that seem to actively endorse save-scumming through their own built-in design. Games like L.A. Noire or Telltale's The Walking Dead spring to mind - games with a strong narrative focus, that place emphasis on the decisions you make as a player and seek to reward the player with unique consequences depending on those decisions. The fact these games allow you to replay individual missions or chapters to try and take the story in another direction, so you can find out what might have been, seems to go completely against their overall design philosophy. Games that offer Achievements and Trophies for exploring different paths are also guilty of this - Fallout 3's karma-based Achievements spring to mind as an example. You could argue that these encourage multiple playthroughs, but as I said before, the reality is we're all living in a world where games are just one of many things demanding our time and attention. If there's a quicker option, a lot of players are going to take it. If developers are happy for players to rewrite their own stories in games with so much emphasis placed on their narratives, then why are we attaching so much stigma to something as comparatively minor as when and where you choose to save your progress?

I think that ultimately, save-states and save-scumming are as 'legitimate' as you, the player, want them to be within your own experience. Personally, I'm fine with how I used the Restore Point to make my way through Super Mario Bros.. It probably won't be the last time I use save-states to help me tackle a game in this way, and I wouldn't hold it against another player who used it for the same reasons. In fact, I don't think I'd hold use of save-states or save-scumming against any player who was using them to get the experience that they wanted out of any given game, providing it didn't have any negative impacts on others who might be sharing the experience. After all, this medium is supposed to be about having fun. I had fun with Super Mario Bros.. If you're having fun using save-states too, then more power to you.

Now, If you'll permit me to get soppy and personal for a moment, I'd like to close this blog by congratulating my girlfriend Alice on her BA (Hons) in Graphic Design. A degree isn't something that you can save-scum your way towards - you have to put in a lot of time, effort and energy. I was there for a big portion of her course, I stayed up through the late nights and I saw the stresses of deadline days first-hand, so I know how hard she worked to get those grades and earn her qualification - there's no denying the legitimacy of her achievement. Well done Alice, I'm so proud of you.

As always, a huge thank you to everyone for taking the time to read this blog. I suspect it'll be a little while before my next update, but I have plenty I intend to get through before the end of the year. Having finished Skyward Sword earlier today, I'm now able to get back to my An Hour With... blog series, starting with a sixty-minute look at a Giant Bomb fan favourite and continuing with some very special instalments beyond that. I'm also really looking forward to tackling the issue of Game of the Year next month, especially given how many games I'll have to talk about. Until next time, take care, and I'll see you around.

Daniel

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Currently playing - Pokémon Ultra Sun (3DS)