Save Points

Save points are wonderful.

Save points can be objects, a location, a gate you pass through; whatever it may be, they play a major role: protecting the progress that you've made thus far. Which is of course rather important when you've just: slain a boss, found some hidden treasure, saved the world, etc. etc..

Probably something that people overlook with save points however, is to go back when they've made a mistake in the game. I.e. choosing the wrong option and preventing you from obtaining an item later in the game. This can be a complete lifesaver if the mistake was made later in the game (or even just 10 hours into the game).

Now imagine the convenience of having such a tool exist in our lives.

Having save points so we can save before writing a test. We can write the test, see what's on it, and go back in time and rewrite it. We can go back in time to undo purchasing something that we found out later to be useless. If we accidentally mess up, or do something ridiculously stupid, we can go back and it's all undone.

But this supposed imagining is based on one key assumption: we remember what's happening. Within games, when we go back to the previous save point, our characters (in fact all characters within the game) lose the knowledge after that point. It is we (the players) that still retain such knowledge because we exist out of their plane. (On a side note, it'd be pretty neat if programmers made a character in the game that knew you were restarting the game because of some error).

If we are to have save points, how would this affect our minds? Would we too lose our experience, then once again make the same mistakes? Or suppose that our memories are actually preserved, then would that not remove the need for the save point? Everyone remembers that you messed up, even if you went back to the save point to undo it.

Perhaps another thought is what if only the person going back through a save point retains their experience, and no one else. Whose save point would rule then? Does mine? Does yours? In such a case, the earlier save point would probably overrule the later ones. Which would essentially give power to the older people to continuously overrule all others' saves. Scary.

Sadly, life has no save points. The mistakes we make? We live with.


In other news...


I beat Super Mario Galaxy already (on the Wii, yeah, I have one). I think this was only 3 days after starting the game? Lol. Well, technically speaking, since I've only collected 61 stars (out of a possible 120), I've only played half the game. I only say 'beat' because I've seen the ending credits roll. So technically, I'm not done yet... and it'll be much harder because the latter stars are oh so difficult. Something to work on I suppose. I'll talk more about the game when I'm done with it.

Also speaking of games, I'm really really excited for the release of Okamiden on the DS. This collector's set is awesome. Speaking of collector's sets... I've never really bought one of those, but somehow the Okamiden one gets me really excited. Must've been the good impression Okami left me with when I first played it.

Also on the topic of games, Demon's Souls is ridiculous tough. But we all know that.