Hacker News Reader

Comment by qiqitori | Hacker News Reader

Used it for the first time a couple months ago.

* Plays original copies from your computer's DVD drive (which may be a bit slower to respond than original hardware though)

* Plays Grandia III very well on my 2012 laptop (3rd-gen i5 and integrated GPU) (needed to change some interlacing settings to get rid of some flashing). Also obviously allows you to save anywhere you want. The original game doesn't have any save points in dungeons! Possibly only playable on an emulator? :p

* PS3 and USB-HID controller support

* Didn't play my Taiko no Tatsujin copy very well, but maybe my system isn't quite up to the task

View on HN

Save states have made it so much easier for me to be an adult AND play games.

Oh, kids are yelling? Take a save state. Phone is ringing? Save state.

I can't be in my 30s and tell people "sorry, I was making my way to a save point".

Amen to this

Being able to shut down at any time is very nice, but what of pause?

I could pause, but I can't be sure if I'm coming back in 10 minutes, or if I'll forget all about it and come back in 10 days.

Reminds me of leaving my Nintendo on to not lose progress.

Something like rg35xx or miyoo mini are also good for playing emulators as an adult. Eg. Take it with you on errands. Grind on JRPGs in the doctor's waiting room. Shut it off and it has a save state.

Just got myself a miyoo mini plus. Plays Tony hawk for the ps1 at 60fps which I find amazing. It's perhaps a tad small but that makes it very portable, there are similar devices if you want something bigger.

I don't see this mentioned often enough - it's like a superpower for emulators. You just select the save state and it loads instantly, exactly where you left off.

You can just pause the game bro. Thank me later.

Yea, works like a charm when you have to leave and forget about the console.

Save points were invented because of a lack of space for proper saves and because yes, coding a full state save is hard. But with today's hardware there is no excuse. And if it's an AAA they can just take 0.001% off the marketing budget and pay a team to do proper saves.

I always assumed old save states were just RAM dumps – kind of like MS Word files pre ’97 or so.

If they save everything they could be. But for example the PS1 had 2 mB ram and its memory card was 128 kB...

If they just save your character at predefined save points, not really.

Only problem of being able to save at any time is that it breaks the intended experience. For example in FF8 during the final arc the save point ( along with other features, like be able to use magic ) is taken away from you and you need to kill some strong bosses to get it back, because each boss after being defeated let's you restore a functionality of your choice, restoring the save point becomes part of your strategy

Reply on news.ycombinator.com