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DS Daily: The state of saving

Save Game As?


Portable gaming is fundamentally designed for more sporadic, shorter periods of play. Bus rides, waiting rooms, you know the sort. And thus a fundamental problem arose: how does one allow a gamer who needs to stop playing immediately to save one's progress? Allow a true save anywhere, and the game's difficulty is compromised. If the system was left alone, however, frustration would set in as players would be quite often forced to replay the same thing over again.

Recently, many games have begun implementing a "quick save" option, which allows a temporary save and one-time load upon rebooting the system (the Final Fantasy Advance series comes to mind). This is confusing for many gamers, though, and accidents are bound to happen. What do you guys think? What's the ideal way to handle the situation?