Is Using Save States Cheating?

[Emma]

I largely don't see it as this anymore. Especially with games with not so good saving. Between my job and personal life I often have to drop what I'm doing at a moment's notice. Using traditional saving that means I lose a huge amount of progress. But with save states I lose nothing. Replaying some old DS games by emulating has been much better with save states.

As many others have said, it's also great with games that are unfairly difficult with poorly made save systems such as Zelda 2.

 

[MW7]

I think it only qualifies as cheating if you are in competition with others, and you use save states without that being agreed upon in advance. For example if you are speedrunning and use save states, that is cheating. It should be obvious, but people can hide it.

If you are playing for fun, you probably should at least not brag about beating a difficult game without qualifying that you used save states. That wouldn't be cheating though. I think for my purposes, I think I would never save state within a prolonged fight. Like if I'm at the end of Zelda 2, I would save state before Thunderbird, but I wouldn't save state a minute into the fight when I have a great start.

There are some games that are truly unbearable without saves states. There is a Jurassic Park game for SNES that has no save system. I have beaten it once, and having to beat it in a single sitting is ridiculous.