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[COLUMN] Hell Yeah, Save Points | by Marty Sliva
🕑 Added 2025-01-14 16:00:16 +0000 UTC
I spend a lot of time thinking about random elements of games that most normal, healthy folks probably just gloss over. Stuff like the various startup sounds of older consoles, the strange beauty of a game’s skybox, and the art of the mid-game disc swap. You know, typical weirdo stuff. And one of those things that my mind always seems to go back to are the unique ways that certain games present their save systems.
To be clear, there’s a philosophical aspect to the save conversation that I find less interesting. Should we have full control over when we save, or do we like it when a developer grabs the wheel from us? Should we have a bevy of save files that can easily be reverted back to, or should we add weight to our decisions by having one and only one slot? Is the best save system one that we never even think about?
Those discussions are all well and good, but that’s not why we’re here today. We’re here because when a developer drops a silly, unique, memorable, or emotional save system, I can’t help but whisper out a little “hell yeah” to myself from under my breath.
By the time I really started getting into games during the SNES era, a handful of save slots were the norm. I still have my cartridges for games like A Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, and EarthBound that still have a slot dedicated to my childhood save files, a really neat time capsule of the adventures that shaped me as a kid.
As the consoles evolved, so did the methods of recording our journeys. I had a drawer filled with various memory cards from the Nintendo 64, original PlayStation, and those cute lil’ Dreamcast VMUs where I’m sure some poor Chao has starved to death at some point during the Obama administration. And of course, our adventures are now just recorded on internal and external hard drives, SD cards, and cloud saves. Less character than what came before it, though undoubtedly more efficient.
But to me, the best save points are an art form in and of themselves, and contribute to the mood of a given game. I became a fan of these pretty early on, as it felt like the ‘90s were filled with developers delivering unique methods of saving our games. In EarthBound, you’d have to find a hotel or store with a phone and use it to call up your dad, who’d give you a bit of advice, deposit some money into your bank account, and finally save your game before sending you back on your adventure. In Super Metroid, the save chambers scattered across Zebes acted as moments of solace across an otherwise alien world, complete with their iconic jingle as your progress was recorded.
As these were codified, it also opened the door for some developers to subvert the idea of a save point. Chrono Trigger’s save points were tied to sparkling, but otherwise unremarkable, spots across the world that delivered a delightful “ping” sound when you activated them. However, in one section where you needed to slowly navigate a sewer system filled with creatures who’d attack at the slightest sound, there’s an alluring save point that I activated, only for that “ping” to exist in the game world, summoning enemies and tossing me into battle. Some real FromSoft shit by Squaresoft, right there.
And I love the moment in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night where you stumble upon your 20th or so polyhedron save point, only for this one to appear a deep and unnerving shade of purple. You try to use it, and instead of marking your progress, you’re whisked away to a nightmare world where you have to face a monstrous take on the moment that your mother was murdered. Also, the revelation in Xenogears regarding just exactly what the in-world save points are made of has stuck with me for over 25 years.
The move into the PS1 generation also brought with it a flock of interesting new wrinkles to saving our games. In Resident Evil, saving became tied to a consumable item, forcing you to decide whether to use a precious Ink Ribbon, or press on a bit further at the risk of losing your progress when some dumb dog crashes through a window and gives you a big ol’ peck on the face.
Metal Gear Solid had long Codec conversations with Mei Ling, who would often just chat about movies she’s seen, bestow some some philosophical tidbits, or yell at us for being perverts. And in order to save in Mega Man Legends, you just need to speak with a dancing monkey. Nothing more to add there, other than perhaps every single game ever made would be better if that’s how you had to save your game.
As we pressed on into the PS2, the unique save point that immediately comes to mind are Ico’s benches, which give a moment of respite for our two heroes along their dangerous journey out of the castle. Loading up a save file will often show us the pair asleep on the stone seats, only waking up once we move the control stick. I have to imagine that Team Cherry were somewhat inspired when they made the save benches in Hollow Knight.
The same generation gave us Silent Hill 2’s ominous red squares and Killer7’s utterly bizarre little pocket dimensions sometimes occupied by a maid who’s more than happy to save your progress. And on the subversive side, the sanity effects of Eternal Darkness would oftentimes trick you into thinking the console has shut off, or that your save file had been corrupted. A cruel, unusual, and absolutely effective way to bolster the game’s atmosphere.
But as we pressed on through the generations, it feels like unique save points fell out of vogue, at least in the AAA space. It now feels like autosaves, manual saves, and some variation of FromSoft’s bonfires are the fallback in so many of the big games from the past decade or so. Again, it’s absolutely more practical, but definitely loses out on a bit of character.
Thankfully, indie games like Shovel Knight, Demon Turf, Undertale, and Doki Doki Literature Club have done a good job of providing unique takes on saving and checkpoints, with the latter two definitely leaning into the aforementioned subversive category.
So usually at the end of these columns I try to come to some kind of conclusion regarding the topic at hand. But honestly, I don’t have one today. I just really like it when a game does something creative with its save system. Let me know of any weird ways of saving you have fond memories of, or if you have any saving horror stories like forgetting to hit the eject button on your Steel Battalion controller and losing all of your progress like a chump.
Comments
Curagea Crafts
I always appreciate a good save point that's well-integrated into the game. And I'm a sucker for pay phone save points. There's something about picking up the phone to let whoever is at the other end know where you are, whether in Parasite Eve or Yakuza 0 (I believe Sorry We're Closed also use phones, although I haven't played it). But my biggest question about them is: how much money is being spent on the pay phones??? That said, I REALLY love Final Fantasy IX's save points. They're moogles! They're cute! And they want mail!
Marty Sliva
I really appreciate that, Manny.
Manny
I love your stuff Marty - you're a real asset to SWG :).
Tim Carroll
I haven’t played that, but I do remember that on the last disc of Final Fantasy seven they gave you a portable save point. I remember being incredibly mad. “Wait, you mean that you could have done this the whole time???”
Jared
Back when Diablo 1 came out, my brother accidentally hard locked his save account when he was in a fight with the Butcher. He fought, died, and reloaded his game from a save point he made just before initiating the fight. At one point, he got tired of seeing the death animation over and over again, so just before the Butcher landed the killing blow, my brother hit escape in order to manually load his game. Except he accidentally hit "save game" instead. So now his game was permanently saved to the moment just before the Butcher landed a killing blow. He reloaded several times, trying to avoid the final attack, but never survived. He had to start the game over from scratch.
Lio
In old RE, it took a whole damn roll of ink ribbon to type out one save. Just what was going on there?
Lyle Hammond
Honorable mention: the No More Heroes franchise in which you save your game by taking a poop.
Alex Adams
I remember when Memory Cards became I thing I didn’t understand that I could just make as many saves as I want and I filled up multiple memory cards with like 1 game and was like “these things suck” I was also like 10 but you know. When I eventually figured out how to delete data off the cards I felt very stupid.
Nightbreeze
In Dead Rising, you have to go to the restrooms in the mall, which fit with its silliness. And on the other end of the spectrum, Silent Hill 4's save point was in the apartment, and we all know how that turned out.
JR
Not weird at all but still a strong memory: the books in the Harry Potter 2 PC game were beautiful visually fitting saving spots. The RE4 typewriters on the other hand were a bit weird considering the technological level of other parts of the game, but that save room music - maybe I'll just listen to it on a loop between my next exams to calm myself down. :)
GayBearDaddy2
I think it's more of a "we wanted to focus on improving what we had," which avoided the pokemon problem of having too much and everything becoming bland as a result.
Jeremiah Maxel
I think controlling the ability to save is just as important as controlling any other bit of the game mechanics. It is easier to simply allow players to save wherever but it gives up the ability to really do stuff with it.
Sparkax
Awesome, thank you!!!
Jeremiah Maxel
I miss those days. It was too bad as time went on the gameplay got better, the monster variety shrunk.
rhekke
Been a while, but as I recall (and *Spoilers*) Solaris uses the memory cubes (save points) to track and record the living data of anyone who uses them. This allows them to track any living person who uses them, but also track the population for individuals to transform into biological components to resurrect Deus/God.
Marty Sliva
Oh god, that Animal Crossing story sounds like a nightmare, and I love it.
Marty Sliva
Hell yeah, any love for FF12 is good in my book.
Martyn Hackett
The best jump scare in Arkham Asylum is the "crash" at the start of a Scarecrow sequence. There's no manual save, just checkpoints, so the powerlessness is all too real!
Pat the Vandal
I immediately thought of Ori and the Blind Forest's "make your own save point" approach. Can't say I've seen another game do that and it felt like a revelation at the time.
Sparkax
Ok, it's been a very long time since I last played Xenogears, what were the save points made out of?
GayBearDaddy2
Just got to "mid-game disc swap" and immediately remembered the *Monster Rancher* series, of which I need 3, 4, and Evo brought into the new generation because all of my old discs were scratched and stopped my progress at certain points!
Tim Wilson
This has unlocked a very creepy memory in my childhood of playing the Gamecube Animal Crossing. Basically you could still transfer characters between towns, but to do it you had to save your character to the memory card, which you could then physically plug in and load elsewhere. However, if you still tried to play as the exported character then your cute little villager became a featureless husk with gaping black holes where the eyes and mouth should be. Horrific stuff, wifi and local wireless was a great improvement! That said, I do appreciate a good save point when it’s well integrated and thematic. Without that, as much as I loved saving at a phone box in Yakuza, moving between 0 and 6’s auto and menu saves was an absolute god-send.
melchar
Due to cr@ppy desktops & decades spent with tabletop rpgs, I didn't play games on PC. FFX on the PS2 was my first ever console game & stole my heart. The 'save spheres' were a novel concept & much appreciated. They were also WAY too rare on the Mihen Highroad, where it was possible to stagger along for 2 hours of encounters between one and the next. For that reason, I very much prefer 'at will' save options in PC games - but I still love FFX.
RedRook
The one that immediately comes to mind was the mimic pretending to be a save crystal in FF XII
