this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2026
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How were you meant to complete games that had no save system? (feddit.uk)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by smeg@feddit.uk to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
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Most of the games I played back in the day had some way of resuming your progress at a later date, whether that was an actual save system, a password system, or even a hidden warp zone. What were you supposed to do for longer games that had no way at all of resuming your progress after switching the console off? Get good enough at the start of it that you could play the game faster and eventually complete it in one go, or just leave the console on overnight and continue the next day?

(and yes, my Mega Drive is currently sitting powered on because I couldn't think of a better way to keep my progress)

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[–] cattywampas@lemmy.world 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I don't think it's quite right to call it "artificial" lengthening because it's an intentional game design choice. The whole game is artificial, after all.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 5 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Well I guess we'd consider it artificial by today's standards. If a modern game tried to claim their game contained X hours worth of content but really you could complete it in much less if it didn't keep making you repeat parts then we'd judge it much more harshly. Obviously not entirely fair to judge a much older game the same way though!

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

By today's standards, yes. But back then, saving was the exception and they only included it in the games that were much too long to possibly complete in one sitting.

Although, by the time we were in the SNES era, I remember thinking it was pretty annoying when devs didn't include some form of save or password system.

[–] missingno@fedia.io 5 points 5 days ago

If a modern game tried to claim their game contained X hours worth of content

Games back then typically didn't advertise hour counts that way though. That's a much more modern way of looking at games.