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The Super Banter Bros.
The Super Banter Bros. Ep 18 The State of Saves
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In this week's episode, The Super Banter Bros. banter about how game saving has evolved. Can you believe there was a time where video games COULDN'T save? Like, at all? We are old enough to have lived through that era. 😅😂
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Hello, hello, and welcome everybody to this exciting banter-filled episode of the Super Banter Brothers. Uh, but make sure your brains have enough space in them today, and uh your uh proverbial memory cards have enough room. Make sure, because we're gonna be talking at you. And if you want to partake, uh you might need to you might need to make sure your brains have the space, which on a very real level for a second in this intro. That is hard to do these days, giving your brain space for anything. So the fact that you you are choosing to for episode 17 of this show really means a lot. Anyway, I am Superbanterbro Grand Patrizio, and with me as always is the freshest bake luchador, Superbanterbro. Senor Donut. Ah, the proper flourish this time. I love it, brother. Um so yeah, before we get into the meat and potatoes of the topic, uh, let's start our banterbro show the way we do. Always bantering about what we play. Senor Donut, if you'd like to start us off.
SPEAKER_03I have been playing so much, Grant. So much have I been playing that I think I don't have enough time to talk about all of it. Such incredible amounts of gameplay, both on stream and off-stream. Um, on stream, I've been playing a lot of different games. I've been playing a game called Is This Seat Taken, which is a puzzle game about um moving people, and by people I mean um geometric shapes who are um given people like qualities.
SPEAKER_00Are we all geometric shapes put together in this crazy world called life?
SPEAKER_03I mean, some people would call me a square, so yes, I I agree. Um, so anyways, uh anyways, uh in this game, you are moving um different uh shapes slash people into a seating arrangement, whether that's at a wedding, whether that's on the bus or waiting for a plane or on a tourist boat. And all of these people have particular requests. Like somebody wants to be sitting next to a uh somebody wants to be sitting next to somebody who is eating popcorn so they can steal popcorn. Somebody is cheering for the away team and they're cheering for the home team, so they want nowhere, they don't want to be seated anywhere near those people. Some people want to stand because they've been sitting all day. Some people want to sit in the direction that the vehicle is going. Some people smell and some people don't want to be seated next to somebody that smells bad. Some people wear too much cologne, and those people um and some people don't want to be seated next to people who have strong odors. Uh, some kids want to sit next to each other so that they can play. Other people want to chat with each other. And it's just like this great like game that has you figuring out how to satisfy everybody's needs uh in the space that they're in. And it has a slight story that follows a shape called a rhombus called Nat, who uh finds that they want to be an aspiring actor and is worried that their shape is not uh attributed well to being an actor.
SPEAKER_00So they say Oh, rhombus, rhombus. I feel you so bad. I feel you so bad. From what I've seen, us round types, rhombus. I mean, just just vibing with rhombus here for a second. Us round types are cast in like comic relief roles, never the lead roles for us, unless we're chiseled and and angular. So I I I feel ya, Rhombus, in terms of is my shape getting in the way of being an actor? I feel you there. That is a journey all of us geometric shape vehicles called humans go on in life. I apologize. The joke was there. Please continue.
SPEAKER_03So Nat finds that there is another Rhombus that has made a big name for themselves and is looking to follow in their footsteps. So uh they are chasing this actor down to get tidbits and you know, inspiration and advice on how to make it in the show business. And that's the loose story that it is. But all of it is just you uh putting shapes, people where they should be, where everyone is satisfied with it. It's a fantastic game uh that I would recommend you play. And then I've also been playing through my first playthrough of Pokemon Leaf Green, and I have now beaten Lieutenant Surge, meaning I have now three badges, and I am on my way to I want to say Lavender Town, I think. Um I'm going through a dark tunnel that I need flash, and I gave I have a Mr. Mime, and Mr. Mime is the one that learned Flash.
SPEAKER_00So you would give Ash's dad flash. You would. You would. Out of any Pokemon player I know, that would be you.
SPEAKER_03He was the one that was able to learn it. So I mean, is it really my fault if I'm just making the most out of uh, you know, what I have on the table?
SPEAKER_00Well, if you would keep that Pikachu, you would made your playthrough PG 13 at least. Anyway.
SPEAKER_03No, what how what did I call it? Because you pronounce it Gyrados, right?
SPEAKER_00Gyarados, Gyarados, something like that.
SPEAKER_03I think I called it gyro, like uh like uh gyridos or something, or something like that. Because I I I can't name Pokemon to save my life, uh, because I've mispronounced many different Pokemon names, like uh Conklder, um, which that's not how you how you pronounce it. How do you pronounce it, Grant?
SPEAKER_00Um, the based on what I've heard, it's Conkelder, but I used to always call it Conklder myself until I heard that the uh I heard anime and official sources say Conkelder. So I'm like, oh, that's how the brand wants it pronounced. That's what I need to learn. That's my voice acting training at work. To where it's like if the brand has a pronunciation identity that they want for a name or a part of their IP, at least learn to pronounce it right or how they pronounce it. So, like, even if it doesn't roll off the tongue very well.
SPEAKER_03Um I hate that sometimes.
SPEAKER_00I used to call far-fetched far fetched D because I didn't know the apostrophe D what that meant. I used to just call it Farfetch D.
SPEAKER_02Uh, but then when I was cooler, honestly.
SPEAKER_03Like, I'm just imagining this far-fetched D like drifting through Tokyo in his car with his like leak hanging out the side of the window.
SPEAKER_00Tokyo, far fetched D.
SPEAKER_02It's like that song from Fast and the Furious playing.
SPEAKER_00Or anything from the initial D, like arcade cabinets. Just some of that, some of that fast-paced music. You see this car drifting around, pan in. It's a cat, it's a canto far-fetched, just holding the steering wheel. Farfetch, far far!
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna need to make one of those now. I just need to go on to Canva right now. Not a sponsor, by the way. And uh we need to make we need to make an image of that arcade machine of initial D with Farfetch'd just looking back at everybody playing it.
SPEAKER_00Or if you really want to go like the smuggest version of Farfetch'd, you'd use Galar Farfetch'd because it just naturally looks angrier and more smug than its Kanto counterpart. And the leak is much bigger, so you can just have it flop down the leak and be like, Farfetch.
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna get back in it into the leak. I'm gonna have to make this now. I am inspired to make uh just internet meme stuff. Great, fantastic.
SPEAKER_00Um if you make this meme, I will provide some of the vocals for it. Farfetch, far, far.
SPEAKER_03Um, but yeah, that's what I've been playing on stream and off-stream, I've been playing a lot of different things. There's a game called uh, I think it's called uh Scritchy Scratchy, which is a lotto game that I talked about last time. Um then there is another game that's called Rack Coin, which is about, you know, those money, those like coin games where you drop a token in or a quarter in, and then like a little uh shelf goes back and forth and pushes coins in. Yeah, I I uh have been playing this game, and it's a it's also a um a roguelike game. So you have power-ups that you can have, you have abilities that you can have as well, uh, and it's a very uh fun game. Like both of these games, the scritchy scratchy, the rack coin, are just kind of like you know, mindless gambling games, but there is somewhat of a um, I want to say, like grind uh path to win or to get high scores or whatever. So those are games that I've been playing off stream as well as uh going through Chrono Trigger again. I was playing that game on stream a while ago, but there was a lot of issues that I had, tech issues that I had with running the PC port of it, but it runs fine on my um on my Steam Deck. So what I'm doing is because my goal is to get all of the uh endings in Chrono Trigger, my goal is to play the game all the way through until I get to New Game Plus, and then go on the uh I'm gonna beat this game until I get all of the endings. And that will be done on stream. So I'm basically doing the legwork before going into it.
SPEAKER_00God, but that's setting up your stream series, really.
SPEAKER_03That's exactly what I'm doing. Uh, but I'm having a lot of fun playing it. So that's you know, uh that's a given. Uh just because it's one of my favorite uh RPGs of the SNES era. Um, you know, those those uh have such a high regard to me in terms of just uh the RPG um my my tier list, right? Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, uh, and Final Fantasy VI. Uh those are my top three in no particular order, mind you. Those are my top three um RPGs on the SNES.
SPEAKER_00Gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha.
SPEAKER_03So that's what I've been doing.
unknownNice.
SPEAKER_03You, my friend, what have you been playing besides Sonic?
SPEAKER_00Uh well, right. Um uh other than that, I'm still pretty much on my poke kick, really. Um, both on stream and off. Uh, I've been uh on my last stream, I made some of the remaining finishing touches I needed to make for my big Eevee and friends housing area that I'm calling Evolution Square.
SPEAKER_03Um by the way, that looks amazing. It looks so good. Like I look and uh because I I went into your stream and I I saw what you were making, and I was just blown away by how everything was looking and how every how meticulous the planning was for the electrical um stuff, which was kind of the stuff that you were working on when I was uh in your stream.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, looks wild. It looks so impressive, dude.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. It um it just started with five like pre-built house plots that I built the rest around. And like I really didn't want to get into the major builds that we see all over the place because of the electrical issue. Now that I can make generators and electrical transfers and or uh electrical uh transmitters and bury them under the ground, there's no reason for me to like run wires and all that other stuff that you would have to do when learning about the electricity in Pocopia. So now I can be like, okay, now I can build stuff. It's like that South Park meme from the episode when they like take down some group of bad people using World of Warcraft. Um and I think it was Butters who's like, well, now what do we do? And Cartman's like, what do you mean? Now we can finally play the game.
SPEAKER_03It's that's so funny that you bring that up because I was uh in Ashagod's five-year stream and he kept on saying this, right? He kept and he's like, Where is that from? Where is that from? And then he finally figured out that it was from that South Park episode that you just talked about.
SPEAKER_00That that's kind of my experience with Pocopia now that I have the electrical stuff. I'm like, cool, now I can finally play the game. Um, so part of me has been doing that. Uh another part of me, and again, it's all Pokemon, what I've been gaming on this last little bit. Uh, I've been playing a lot of champions, and I actually, after seeing your stream with the double battles, started double battles myself.
SPEAKER_03Ooh, how's that going?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, right now, I think I am at great one in doubles and ultra three in singles.
SPEAKER_03Jesus Christ. I was about to ask what your rank was, and I'm still in the Pokeball low tier, man. I'm still Pokeball Rank one.
SPEAKER_00I uh um I I might have mentioned on a past stream that I did dabble in competitive esque Pokemon for a while back in the Gen 5 days. Apparently that was. So you have experience. Um like I thought it was mostly outdated experience because I'm like, that's like four generations ago. But apparently that stuff's like riding a bike. You never truly forget it once you expose yourself to it.
SPEAKER_01What's your team?
SPEAKER_00Uh in doubles right now, and it just changed last night. I run Aerodactyl, Tyranitar, Guard Chomp, Orthworm, uh, Mega Charizard Y. Oh God, there's I I always forget the sixth team member of these things. No matter no matter what team I'm talking about, I always forget, and it's right there. Orthworm was the new addition that um oh, Incineroar. That's that's teammate number six. Um and the strategy is basically set stuff up with Aerodactyl. If the lead calls for it, also minor debuffs and distraction with Incineroar, then depending on the opponent's team, I'll have either brought my Mega Charizard Y for weather control and crazy powered fire moves and solar beams. Um, or if I can swing it with just uh Guardchomp and Tyranitar, I do that. But because three of my Pokemon run Earthquake, Oarthworm can absorb the earthquakes in doubles, recovering its HP, setting up its attack, defense, and accuracy, and then hitting people with body press and heavy slam as a steel type. Wow. Um and singles is just Ungabunga big numbers with Mega Gardevoir, uh Garchomp again, uh same build, both teams, and and a Blastoise that I got recently. My big man Blastoise finally on a team somewhere.
SPEAKER_03I think on your first team that you mentioned, I know maybe three of the six Pokemon that you talked about.
SPEAKER_00Gotcha. Okay.
SPEAKER_03I'm not super knowledgeable on Pokemon. That's kind of why I decided to start the uh Pokemon Leaf playthrough because I wanted to go through uh the Pokemon games that I never played so that I can, I don't know, be I wouldn't say be on your level because that's impossible, uh, but like be on a more knowledgeable like foundation of Pokemon, you know, knowledge.
SPEAKER_00Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Well, I I I'm always here to help if you need, um, or if you want. Uh, ever every trainer's journey is their own, see Ash, for the last 25 years. So it's uh yeah, um, that's what I'm doing in Champions. And on the GameCube virtual on the GameCube NSO, Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness just came out, which is actually from the same generation as Leaf Green. So I'm playing both XD and Champions with two different rule sets at their fundamental cores. And I'm like, okay, wait a minute. Um what do you mean bite is not a physical move in Gen 3? Oh, right. I was thinking of champions. Okay, where it is.
SPEAKER_03That's crazy that you that we have such a choice in like uh Pokemon games. Yeah. That there's so many different Pokemon games out there that like it's it's just a crazy like we should do an episode just on Pokemon and its franchise and the different types of games that they have, but that's not what this podcast right now is about. This podcast actually this podcast right now is about saving your game and how that has evolved through the years.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god, has it evolved? Much like a Pokemon. Anyway.
SPEAKER_03Hey, there you go. So both you and I, Grant, are in our well, you're in your late 30s, early mid 30s, um, and I am in my early 40s. We have been around for a long time. We have seen, we have seen the skyscrapers being built uh in gaming history, and we have seen the wars waged, and we have seen the victors, and seen just the evolution of gaming as a whole.
SPEAKER_01Yes, we have.
SPEAKER_03What is your earliest memory concerning a save game, whether it's positive or negative?
SPEAKER_00My earliest experience. Well, I'm I'm gonna tie it to Sonic because my first my first console was the Genesis. Uh, I there's a whole movie out there of me somewhere getting or opening the family's Sega Genesis that came with Sonic 2 and a Sonic plushie that I still have to this day. Um all the way a home movie? Yeah, like uh on a VHS, it was saved and recorded by my family. Like, oh, this is a home movie. We're gonna show you old home movies, like that old tradition.
SPEAKER_03Can I um can I watch that? Is there anywhere where I can watch that?
SPEAKER_00I'll have to see, I'll I'll have to contact my Mutta and see if she has it in storage somewhere. I'd love to see that. I'd have to get it first, but uh yeah. Um I remember watching that home movie ages ago, and it was me holding the box with the Sega Genesis in it that came with Sonic 2 and that plushie. And then when I kept playing through Sonic 2, I would always have to start back at Emerald Hill Zone if I couldn't get through the entire game. So my first impression of a save file or a save state was a complete lack of one, and how if I wanted to get through Sonic 2, I would have to be very young, boy, sweaty gamer man and play through all of Sonic 2 in one go. No save states on modern consoles, uh, couldn't leave the console on overnight because the data would just freeze after a given point. That's how old the Genesis was. Um But yeah, then the first time I remember having a save game was in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, where they implemented that and you selected a file after you picked one player mode. And whenever you started a brand new zone or like the first act of a two-act combo, it saved you there. So when I queued up Sonic 3, I wouldn't have to start all the way at Angel Island if I got to Ice Cap. I'd be able to start at the first level in Ice Cap, which much better considering my parents didn't want me to be Uber Sweaty Youngboy Gamer Man and play through the entire game in one sitting. Um but I did beat Sonic 2 that way eventually. Um but yeah, that's Sonic is responsible for both good and bad first impressions of a save file. What about you, Donut?
SPEAKER_03That actually surprises me that Sonic 2 didn't have a save game option. The reason being that the earliest uh the earliest time that uh video games like a console game had uh a save option was the Legend of Zelda on the NES. That was the first game to feature an internal battery that kept the RAM powered and allowed players to save their progress directly to the game. So it surprises me that your Sonic 2, right? Not the first one on the master system, but the second one didn't have that ability.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it didn't even have one of those uh a lot of the Genesis games that I remember playing. Save systems were through password screens where you'd have to write down on like a not a three by three grid what character faces or letters appeared where in what order. Um, that was a lot of the Genesis games I remember and how they had saves. Um, maybe it was just a way that the cartridge was developed.
SPEAKER_03I have no idea, but it's yeah, I remember password systems. They were most prevalent to me in Mega Man uh because I played through Mega Man, I want to say three, uh a lot when I was a kid. I had Mega Man 3, and I just remember having all of these um, you know, passwords and writing them down somewhere and then losing them or scribbling them out because I got it wrong. And it's crazy that there are the password system, especially in Mega Man, was prevalent even through the X series as well. Like I remember Mega Man X having a password system, and the thing that's crazy is that the password system, I have no idea how it worked because in Mega Man, it has to remember if you beat, you know, the robot what which order or whatever you beat the robot masters in or the Mavericks, it had to remember if you had any uh energy tanks uh saved up um during that. I don't think it remembered if you had lives or not, because I think when you uploaded the password, it just saved you up with uh, you know, the bosses that you beat and the energy tanks that you acquired, as well as the heart containers that you've acquired. So like I'm I'm very curious as to like how the password system worked in Mega Man, because the password system was not unique, it was the same. So you could, you know, if your friend had already beaten Mega Man and had found all of the containers and everything, then you could load up that game by putting in that same password.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so it didn't randomly generate a password for your game or your console. It was just one password for the state of the game, the save state, if you will.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Um, so it's I'm very curious as to how that system worked out. Uh, because a lot of other games also did a password system, uh, where you had to put in the you know correct password to let you know where you left off in your game or whatever. Um but you know, back in the day, arcades didn't have uh save systems because those were those were the arcade games. The only thing that they saved was the high score. That's it. Nothing else was saved because all those games were intended to be played, you know, in one uh complete playthrough.
SPEAKER_00Because how else are they gonna get your quarters?
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Um, but we've gone from having no saves uh and then going into saves on the cartridge and then saves through passwords to uh having memory cards and having uh hard drives and cloud backups and all this other stuff. Um it's it's just wild to see not only how far graphics have evolved in our games to where they're almost photorealistic, yeah, to the point where now we have uh you know the ability to save your game anywhere, basically. I remember so many times, like mom calling me for dinner or telling me to do something, and I'm like, I need to find a save spot, mom. Let me get a save spot or whatever.
SPEAKER_00You know, I had that that that happens so much in my house. And the difference is when my older brother decided to, you know, he did have a few games. He wasn't the gamer like I was. But you it's a tale of two kids, really. When mom calls us to do something, I say, let me I need to find a save point. I find a save point, save the game, go down, attend to my mom. My brother says, I need to find a save point. 30 minutes later, he still hasn't found a save point. What kind of game? Like we we know that's just getting out of responsibility right there.
unknownWe know.
SPEAKER_03I'm not gonna lie, Grant. I think that was me. I think that was me.
SPEAKER_02You know, sometimes you just get you just get sucked into a game sometimes.
SPEAKER_00You just get sucked into a game sometimes, you know? Trust me, I know, but I and I didn't mean to call you out there. That was an accident. Um but yeah, in my home, it was a tale of two brothers. The one who actually saved and the one who uh didn't.
SPEAKER_03Hey, sometimes maybe he did have to find a safe spot because they weren't all over the place. That's true, that's true. You know, so I don't I don't fault your brother, but I don't defend him either because I know I did the same thing. Um so I do want to talk to you about something, Grant, because I I wonder exactly what what a save game is when it comes to games like Pokemon. Because in Pokemon, you could save your game and you had only one save on all Pokemon games, and these games had the battery-powered RAM so that you could save your game on it. But you also had the introduction of a link cable where you could trade your Pokemon over to a friend who had another version of the game or even the same version of the game. But do you consider a Pokemon save data? And let me give you a let me give you an example real quick as to why I consider them save data.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_03Because you have gotten this Pokemon, you have raised it to a certain level. So it has experience points that has to be remembered in the data that you transport. It has its stats that it has to remember to transport over, and uh, I mean, later on as well, like affinity and nature and all of this other stuff that your Pokemon has to be transported over to your friend with. So this was kind of a way to transfer your quote unquote save file over to another friend, and they would trade you their save file, which is your Pokemon or their Pokemon, uh, over. Do you consider that as a means of transferring save data?
SPEAKER_00Well, it that is a good question, and I very short answer, technically, yes, because you are adjusting the save data of both parties involved. And in your specific example, both human players when you trade Pokemon over. Um much like a Pokemon itself, that that identity has evolved in such a way where now we can transfer Pokemon from one game to another game to another game, altering the save file of each transfer step. So it is altering the save data of a game. I don't know how it works in Pokemon, but the way we're talking about it now brings me back to the Dreamcast era, to Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, where they actually had two sets of save data to make sure everything ran properly. The first set of save data was for your main story playthrough, like how many emblems do you have, do characters have their abilities, uh, what stages you've unlocked, rankings, missions, all that. But the second set of save data was all dedicated to the progress you made in their chow raising mini games. Like everything related to the Chow Garden, the Chow stats, uh what prizes you've won, if you've gotten any emblems from the Chow Garden, things like that. All of that is saved in a separate section of like it is basically the second half, and it's listed separately on all these memory cards when you go and look through the save data. It is the Sonic Adventure or Sonic Adventure 2 chow data. So maybe for more modern Pokemon games, no idea how they would do this in the classic ones, maybe a similar system is implemented where you get plot and badge progress on one save data and Pokemon related data on the other side. So you can alter the uh the Pokemon data side without altering your badge collection process uh progress, that data.
SPEAKER_03Wasn't there a glitch or something via the link cable?
SPEAKER_00Not the link cable. Well I I I seem to remember there, and it I I could be wrong, I don't remember how it's done, but I just remember hearing about glitches with Pokemon that are, you know, if you interrupt the transfer, something will happen to both games, whether it be the transfer completes, the transfer doesn't complete, the Pokemon glitches and duplicates itself, so both players have both. I've heard of such things. I can't corroborate it, at least with the old games. But with Pokemon Champions, there was recently a little snafu that got supposedly patched out, where if you tried to transfer your Pokemon from home, the transfer just wouldn't work. They would have left home, but never made it to champions. So they're basically a Pokemon Home for the newer games, is basically a way for you to store your Pokemon that you get in pretty much any game after the th including and after the 3DS era. So like Sun and Moon and all them, you could transfer your Pokemon to this like online Pokemon box service, which comes with like 32 boxes of 30 Pokemon each. So you can just transfer your Pokemon from different generations, different playthroughs, your shinies, your legendaries, all that in one place. So when home compatibility is confirmed or implemented for any other game in the series going forward, you can use the Pokemon from home in those other games to sort of bring them with you. Continue the journey, they say.
SPEAKER_03A year, okay. So it's not like a month.
SPEAKER_00No, it's 15 bucks a year, I think. That that's how much I remember seeing it on my statement. Anyway, um you uh you see, like basically you can once your Pokemon is in home, they can go to any game where that Pokemon is usable. Pikachu being usable anywhere practically, you can transfer to any of the games that Pikachu is in, provided home has the compatibility to send Pokemon to those games. Basically, anything on the Switch or higher, you can send a compatible Pokemon to and from the games. Pretty much. That's what they want to that's what they want to try to do at least.
SPEAKER_03So let me ask a deeper question. I'm sorry to keep on interrupting your story, but I have so many questions. So you're you have Pokemon Home. Correct. You must have had a Pikachu that you have moved over there. Yes. If you started a brand new game of Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu, would your Pikachu be able to be transferred from home with all of their stuff and be your main Pikachu in that game?
SPEAKER_00Potentially. It would not be the Pikachu that you know is on your shoulder that you get to pet in the main menu and stuff, but you would be able to use that Pikachu as like to to fill in for your starter, basically. And have your HM Pikachu, the one that you get to pet and stuff, that's separate from the battling Pikachu.
SPEAKER_03Oh, so that that Pikachu that's on your shoulder in that game is not uh battling po Pokemon.
SPEAKER_00It's both. You can include it in your battle party, and you'll know it's the uh the um starter Pikachu because of the little heart icon next to the sprite. Um, you can include that Pikachu in your battle party, and it'll be part of your battle party. But if you don't include it in your battle party, it'll still be on your shoulder, you can still pet it, it'll still help you use the navigation HM techniques, all that fun stuff.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I've never played Pokemon uh Let's Go Pikachu or Eevee or whatever, so I mean it's basically HD remakes of Pokemon Yellow.
SPEAKER_00So if you played yellow, you kind of Which I haven't. Well, uh I I have a special fondness for yellow, beat it in Japanese before it came to the states. Anyway. Um but to get to the main to backtrack to the main answer to your question about Pokemon being save states, they are part of your save data, obviously. And it your save data gets affected when a Pokemon leaves its respective game and transfers to another person's game. So in that sense, you are altering the save data. So technically, yes, it is a a piece of your save data. But how the save data works, it could be like Pokemon could have its own system. It could be something similar to the Sonic Adventure 2 Chow system I described earlier. And Pokemon Champions' recent glitch, where you could not set where like trying to send Pokemon from home to champions would just fail. So the Pokemon you send over is just lost to the technological digital ether forever.
SPEAKER_03Um you lost your Pokemon. Even with the patch, you can't get that Pokemon back.
SPEAKER_00As far as I I haven't heard anybody's Pokemon being recovered after the patch, unfortunately. Um, I really hope I'm wrong there. But from what I've heard, yeah, if it was gone, if it was lost because of that glitch, it's just gone.
SPEAKER_02Rough.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, part of the reason on on my champions kick, I just decided, hey, let's just go balls to the wall, free to play, no battle passes, none of that stuff. Let's see how I do. Also, my competitive Pokemon won't be lost to the ether. Hooray!
SPEAKER_03Wow. But now that it's fixed, are you gonna pull out your competitive Pokemon or no?
SPEAKER_00Um, still haven't decided that yet. My my free-to-play roster in champions is helping me climb ranks a little bit. So I'm like, maybe I'll just stick with this. Use the champions, use the champions training to uh tweak the Pokemon that I do bring in if I do decide to bring them in.
SPEAKER_03So you touched upon memory cards, and before we get into that aspect of uh save games, I do want to talk a little bit about uh memory cards in general as to where they started. Um in my like this is without me looking anything up, of course, because this is just what I recall growing up. Um, when the next generation of gaming came out, Nintendo decided to go the route of everything is gonna stay on the cartridge, and that's what it is. That's where your save game is gonna be and live and everything.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_03But Sony and Sega had different ideas. Sony decided to have the memory card, which was eight megabytes of data that you could save from your game.
SPEAKER_00To think some gamers would say that was big for back in their day. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Ridiculous and what the cool thing was is that you could have your save data, and it was portable. You could take it from your game and take it over to your friend's house so you can have your created character from whatever game you had or whatever, or your progress or whatever, on this uh card that you could take over to your friend and upload so that you could play the same kind of game the same way that you were playing on your home console.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_03But I think Sega was really ahead of their time with their memory card because their memory card wasn't just a memory card, it also had a screen on it and buttons so that you could basically take that and play your game and advance certain aspects of your game, not all of it, by the way.
SPEAKER_00Yep, yep.
SPEAKER_03This goes back to your chows.
SPEAKER_00That's exactly one of that's what I was going to bring up with it. Because back in the Sonic Adventure games on the Dreamcast, you and another cool thing, these memory cards slotted into the controllers, and the controllers had two slots for two different memory cards to draw from. Um, so there could be up to eight sets of data that a player can draw from, depending on if you have four controllers or not. Um, but in the Sonic Adventure game specifically, this was my experience with it. If you sent a chow to this memory card and then pulled the memory card out, it was basically a little Tamagotchi at that point. You could raise the chow, feed it, uh up its stats, uh get new items for it, and then when you put the memory card back in and cue the game back up, you can bring the upgraded chow out and any items you would have collected while you were out adventuring with this little Tamagotchi memory card in your pocket. And it was so cool.
SPEAKER_03Tamagotchis were big back then. Like, everybody had a Tamagotchi. And the fact that Sega was like, hey, you know what? Let's uh let's make save games uh be on these memory cards. Okay, cool. And then somebody was like, wait a minute, Tamagotchis are a thing. Why don't we make it a mini Tamagotchi? And that person is now the president of no, I'm just joking.
SPEAKER_00Um if you were about to say that person is the president of Sega, uh, no. Um I think at the time of this recording, active CEO of Sega, at least of America, is ironically named Ivo. Just like present just like president of Nintendo America was ironically named Bowser for a while.
SPEAKER_03That is wild to me, by the way. It's like Sega and Nintendo were like, how could we make a meme out of this that the internet will eat up? I know. Let's get two guys and name them after our baddies.
SPEAKER_00Our head hotchos are secretly our villains. Yeah, right. They're not because they're actually good at what they do. Ironic. We love it.
SPEAKER_03Oh man. The the memory card for the Dreamcast was like one of the coolest things that I remember seeing, but the Dreamcast was so expensive when it came out, um, and that was a very big barrier for me um to be able to get one, uh, because you know my family was poor. Um, but the PlayStation was a thing, and it also had memory cards that were way less expensive and um simple. Uh when I first got a PlayStation, it was a it was a birthday gift. And I've told you this story many times, Grant, where the first game that I played on it was Final Fantasy VII. And I was super excited to play it, played it so much, and then when it came time to save my game, I thought that it was on the system itself that you saved your game. But that was not the case. It was a memory card, and I had to convince my mother, who was working, you know, three or four jobs at the time to raise us kids by herself. I had to convince my mom to drop down another, you know, 20 to 40 dollars, however, however many dollars that uh save game cartridge was, you know. Um and I I played the beginning of disc one of Final Fantasy VII so many times because I never kept my system on because I was worried that I was gonna break it by leaving it on. So yeah, I just had to restart all the time until I got a memory card to do what I needed to do on that game system. Um but the crazy thing is how some of that data was implemented in games in the future. I know that you're gonna you're gonna help me remember the fact that Metal Gear Solid did something fantastic with their memory card. Oh my god. Oh my mind. When I was a child. And I don't know if it's possible to do or to replicate how mind-bending that was. Um, until we have other things like uh, what was it, Alone in the Dark, I think, or it was a game on the GameCube that we'll talk about in a second. But to finish off the thought, Metal Gear Solid, which was a Konami game, um, did this very fascinating and interesting thing where a villain in the game could read, quote unquote, read your mind. And what ended up happening is they would read your memory card, save data, to see what games you were playing. And the villain would say, Ah, I see you're a fan of Ape Escape. And it like, or some other random game. I don't know if it I know the Castlevania Symphony of the Night was one of them because it was a Konami game. But when that happened, that game, Metal Gear Solid, which we should also do a deep dive into because it's such a fascinating series, uh, did so many things with Metal Gear Solid 1. Um, but the memory card one was the one that blew my mind the most because you had your game read what your save data was and comment on it. Yeah. Um, which was crazy. I got I kind of want to go and see if somebody like compiled a list of all the different things that were said or whatever in that Psycho Mantis fight.
SPEAKER_00Well, I can tell you one thing. Uh, when that game was released for the GameCube, that's when I first started seeing clips of it because it was re-released to the GameCube when Nintendo themselves finally transitioned to okay, fine, we'll do memory cards because we're using CDs now. Um Psycho Mantis Red Super Mario Sunshine.
SPEAKER_03Ooh, what did he say? Do you remember?
SPEAKER_00He's just like, You like Super Mario Sunshine? And I'm just like, wait, hang on, what? Because and now looking at it from an you know, I I do voice acting, I get that insight as to how like voice lines and uh how my recordings are shaped, uh tweaked, and implemented into the final product. Part of me wants to know if it was like primitive AI technology that got him, that got Psychomantis to actually, in some sort of Psychomantis approximation voice, read Super Mario Sunshine, a la, you know, some Microsoft Sam Tech back in the day. Or if they had Psychomantis' VA go in and read the title of every single GameCube game that was out at the time.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00For the sake of making that for the sake of making that line work, regardless of what game you were playing.
SPEAKER_03Uh, I I don't think it would be an AI thing or even uh the voice actor reading every single, you know, game that came out. I think maybe it was a choice number of games that the voice actor read out. Like, for example, I think it was only Konami games that were registered in the uh first iteration of Metal Gear Solid 1. Whereas in Twin Snakes, which was the upgraded uh graphical version for the GameCube, maybe it was only first party Nintendo stuff. Because everybody on everybody that had a GameCube had to have played a first party game. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00Probably like a Smash Melee or a Luigi's Mansion or a Mario Sunshine.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. So that would make sense. Exactly. So I don't think it was an AI thing. I think it was just, hey, uh Nintendo's like, hey, uh, we need you to record these lines just in case the player has a game that is on uh on their save file because it they had to have had one of those uh mainline first party games.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So it sounds like we're we're leaning toward a voice actor hired for more recordings round. Yes, and for that time, that would make much more sense to me, but it's still mind-boggling how that would have to work, just arranging the session, getting the list, figuring out which list would be the things that the villain reads. Um nowadays, uh nowadays I don't see anybody doing that unless it's like a I don't know, a game where the whole point is to manipulate the files, like a Doki Doki Literature Club situation. Yes, where you literally have to go into your computer's files and delete one of the characters in order to revert the game to something that resembles how you started it, even though when you revert the game, that character is just gone. Yeah, gone.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So that uh I I have just been fascinated by just how these games have evolved in terms of like playing with something like a save game. Like I I forget which game, uh I think it's called Eternal Darkness, maybe that was on the GameCube, where um you had something called either sanity or insanity or madness or whatever, some mechanic, right? That would uh basically tell you that your save game was erased, completely wiped. And when you went back into the game, it was gone. Your file was gone. And you had to. I forget that I forget exactly what it is because I never played the game, but I remember that that game toyed with the idea of you having uh lost your save game, and that is one of the biggest, biggest things for anybody that plays current games.
SPEAKER_00It can literally end relationships between gamers. Like if you mess with a gamer's save file, that's mmm, mmm, no, it it it mm mm mm mmm don't don't don't do that, don't do that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there are there are games that have toyed with that idea or done something similar. Uh I think I think Hollow Knight is one of them, where if you play the game in, I think it's uh steel mode or true steel mode or whatever it's called, uh basically once you die, that's the end of the game. And however, however much many times you save, that's that save file is gone. You could be near the end of the game and have died, and that's it. It's gone. Your save file, you have to start all over. But that's that's a uh a player uh instigated thing, right? Yeah. That's the the that's the thing that uh I think um I think that Baldur's Gate 3 does the same thing with their honor mode, uh, where if you like in Baldur's Gate 3, you can save your game and it has a bunch of different save slots. So you can basically save scum and be like, I'm gonna be a bad guy here and do all these bad things just to see what it's like, or I'm gonna save right before an important choice just to see if it's worth it or whatever, right? You can do that in that game. Yeah, in honor mode, you cannot do that. Whatever choice you make is final. And if your game, if your characters die, that's it. It's your save file is gone and you can't do it. These are all things that have been player implemented as an option, not as uh, you know, the standard way to play. Although there are some games that do that as well, that are like, hey, this is the only way to play.
SPEAKER_00Um, which I think is the earliest Fire Emblem games did that when they impl like by their implementation of permadeath by default. Am I am I am I on board with that, with my understanding?
SPEAKER_03I think so. Um, I haven't played a ton of Fire Emblem games. The only one that I've played a ton of uh was the one that was on the 3DS that had Chrom in it. I forget which one that one is. I want to say it's uh that wasn't Emblems. I think it was Emblems maybe.
SPEAKER_00I think it was Awakening, Fire Emblem Awakening.
SPEAKER_03I think you're right. I think you're right. I think you're right. Um, but that game is one that I played a lot of, and that one did have permadeath as well, but you could turn it off.
SPEAKER_00Um thank goodness for that. Like I'm talking about those games where permadeath is by default and you can't change it.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Uh a game that comes to mind immediately is Final Fantasy Tactics, the original. In that game, if one of your characters died and got turned into a gem, that was it. You couldn't uh you couldn't revive them, nothing. They were gone, they were out of your party. Um, with the recent re-release of Evelise Chronicles, uh, they've made it so that uh instead of turning into a crystal and not being able to have them anymore, they basically get knocked out and say, Hey, I gotta get going. I'm not feeling too good. I got the tummy troubles. I'm gonna I'm gonna leave this battle. You know? Um I think that's what they did in Yeah, I think that's what they did in Fire Emblem Awakening as well, the where they gave you that option of no permadeath. So once your person died, they would just retreat.
SPEAKER_00Just leave the battle, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Um but uh save games have evolved so much to the point where now instead of save cards, we have hard saves like on your computer, on your hard drive of your of your game console. Um and you have cloud saves now as well, which uh man, I gotta tell you, back when you had hard drive saves, that allowed for more saving, more often, auto-saving uh your game. So every important beat, your game would auto-save and your game would still be playing. You wouldn't need to stop the game. Uh, it would just auto-save. And that way, if you if anything happened, if the game crashed, if you died, you would be brought back to this point. Of course, you could still manual save as well. And you had that uh updating save to the cloud, which was really great because sometimes, you know, you would have a power outage or something, and your console would have still been on because it was in rest mode instead of completely off mode, and your your hard drive would get corrupted and you would lose everything. But because of cloud saving, you would have the option to go back and get your save game. So they have so many uh safeguards in place of your save data now because of the fact that you stated earlier, Grant, which is if you mess with a player's save data, that could damage the entire relationship that you have had with this game, especially JRPGs, which have 80 plus hours of gameplay that you've sunk into it to advance your character, to unlock unlockables, only to have it wiped or corrupted by something that was beyond your control.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_03I would never return, would never play it again.
SPEAKER_00Like I had a little speed bump with that. Um, and another thing I want to mention as like extra layers of save data that we have now. For a lot of retro game revisits on things like virtual consoles or stuff like that, there are ways to manually implement save states, which even more than a hard save or a backup save, you're allowed to reload a game from a very specific instance, like a specific frame where you save the state. Uh, several times in my Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness playthrough that I've been doing off stream, I forget to save, hard save for a long time, and I forget to update my save states. So when I want to reroll, say, catching a shadow Pokemon, and I reload a save state after not making one for a while, I'm voiped back several hours of progress. And I remember that happening to me, and I'm just like, okay, you know what? Nope, I'm done. Not doing this twice in one day. I can't. My brain just can't. Nope, I'll revisit it when I'm in a good mood. And I revisit it. I remember to drop the save states, and now it has become a pattern when I'm throwing a ball to catch a Pokemon in the NSO XD Gale of Darkness. Drop a save state. Throw the ball, it doesn't work, scum it, try it again. Um just, you know, to make sure that I can have that security in that, oh, this is not what I meant to do. The game was speaking against me. Hold on, rewind. And that's something uh uh these retro revisits also have, which I guess I'm going to fold to you as a similar question that you folded to me about Pokemon. They have a deliberate rewind button or a rewind mode that you can activate and then just literally scroll your gameplay footage back to a certain point. Is that technically altering your save data?
unknownUh-huh.
SPEAKER_00Or is that just altering the gameplay to influence the save data, the implementation of these rewind buttons and these rewind features? Save states obviously giving you multiple instances of that same save data to create what amounts to branching timelines. The save states are saves, no duh. But is like the fast forward or the rewind feature a similar type of save data to like transferring Pokemon between games?
SPEAKER_03So I would first of all, there is no fast forward feature in a game unless you are going back already to go forward back to the point that you hit that rewind button. There is no way that you could fast forward your gameplay if you stopped it at a certain point. So I mean that would be a good one. Unless you're playing some kind of time machine kind of thing, Cohen. Um, but I know that chaos control? No, no, absolutely not. Uh so save if you have if you so in the Nintendo uh Switch Online, you have the ability of rewinding your gameplay, just like Grant said. You can basically pause your game and then scroll back a couple of frames to where you were hit or just before you were hit, so you can react differently to what happened. I don't think that's uh changing your save game at all because you are rewinding time to create a new save game state. So, yes, I do not believe that it is a hard save state kind of situation where you're uh changing or rewriting your data um that has already been saved, because you are basically rewinding it as if the first save state never happened uh in the first place. So there's technically you are altering what the save state would have been, but because it doesn't keep that save state and you start from the new position in the game, that now becomes the save state. So you are not rewriting the original, you're completely erasing it, uh, and moving on to uh a different thing. Um, Pokemon Shiny Hunters have been doing that since they started, since you were able to reset uh a game. Because in Pokemon, you could save the game pretty much at any point, uh, even during dialogue, I believe.
SPEAKER_00Um not during dialogue, but at any point over the or on when you're on the map, you can save the game. Like you can't save in battle, you can't save mid-dialogue, but whenever there's no battle or dialogue going on, you can save the game.
SPEAKER_03Right. And that's that's how shiny hunters are able to save right before they're about to face Mewtwo, or about to face Lugia, or about to choose their starter, because they'll save right before then, so that they can go back to that point that they saved and retry for the shiny.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_03Right? So shiny hunters have been doing the save state uh for much longer than it's been uh available to Shiny Hunt, right? Because the the rewind feature has been in some of those um retro collections that have come out, and now more heavily in the uh Nintendo Switch online um game catalog, including Sega as well. Um so those save states have been a godsend for gamers, uh for you know, older gamers like myself, who never managed to beat a certain game because A, we didn't have it, or B, it was too difficult to play. Prime example, Battletoads. Battletoads had one of the most ratchet ass difficulty spikes I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, like yeah, the I'm reminded of the um the the hover bike, you know, platforming section. Just it it was too ridiculous that one, I would be able to memorize every single thing that was coming up and be able to plan for it, uh, or not. And I've seen you know players who have memorized it, and it's it is a fucking feat of human like memory to to have them memorize the whole like spread out of different obstacles. It's it's wild to me. But when you have the ability to save state and rewind so that you are aware of what's gonna happen before it happens, it makes you feel like God. Like you're able to just go back in time and rewind it. And you're like, man, I wish I had this ability in real life. Say something horrible to your to your friends. Guess what? Rewind and you're back, and it's like it never happened.
SPEAKER_00You know the only one who remembers the trauma and scars is you.
SPEAKER_03But at that time, does it become trauma and scars if you rewind it and it never happens in the first place?
SPEAKER_00But then how would you have had the brain power to understand that you rewound time enough to avoid a certain situation, thus preventing yourself from walking into that situation all over again? Like if you had the brain, like if I had the ability to rewind time right now, because somehow I completely messed up this friendship and said something that would make me make you never want to speak to me again and the Banterbros as a thing just be over. If I rewound time to prevent that, I would have to have the knowledge of the mess up I made that I am rewinding from to ensure that I don't make the mistake again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but would you still have the guilt of whatever you said? So let me give you a better example, all right? What if what if you had this power to rewind time 10 seconds? Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_03Let's say little baby Grant, you know, had a nightmare and was going into his parents' bedroom and saw them giving each other the old nasty, all right? And you rewound 10 seconds, you would still have that knowledge, right? That scarring of that happening.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I would.
SPEAKER_03But your parents would be none the wiser about it. So whenever you like got triggered by something and and had that replay in your mind, they would be completely confused as to why you were reacting the way that you were reacting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But going with your example, if you said something horrible and that made us not be friends anymore, right? Then you would have the knowledge of what you said, but you wouldn't have the trauma associated with it because there would have been no um friction between us. I wouldn't have known anything that was going on with you. So there wouldn't be any hard feelings that you would have at the time. You would know that you said something in what you said, of course, but you wouldn't have that associated trauma. But in something more visceral like what I described earlier, you would have that trauma. So I don't know, man. Like the whole, the whole, like, okay, I know that this is happening, so I'm gonna have this scarring and trauma only relates to certain uh instances, I think.
SPEAKER_00That that is fair, yes. That is fair.
SPEAKER_03But we're thinking I'm also sorry for putting that into your mind as well. And you, dear viewerslash listener.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. We we don't mean to traumatize anybody on this show. We mean to entertain. And unfortunately, trauma was the means by which we chose to entertain in this example. Um and as backward as a statement as the That sounds just in its entirety. I completely get it.
SPEAKER_02I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just I'm just thinking of the whole fucking thing that we just went over. And like Dave, our editor, Dave, our editor is gonna listen to it and just be like, what the fuck, dude? He's gonna be like, what are these guys on?
SPEAKER_00And I have some. Um all of this as a very existential, wacky way to see, oh, um, what act what exactly constitutes as a save file? Drama. Drama is the save file. That is apparently the message we have left, and it is so backwards compared to what we actually wanted. Um all of this to say, save data, much like a Pokemon, whether or not it got lost on the transfer from home to champions, it it has evolved a lot. And we went from the days of it not existing to primitive save files, to backwards password systems that we would have to either write down or memorize, to save states, rewind buttons, hypothetical fast forward buttons, and just everything in between. There are so many ways to keep our games secure and our progress on track that it almost feels like not having it on track is now a conscious choice. Or you're playing permadeath or one of those special modes or one of those games that uses your save data as a game mechanic.
SPEAKER_03I think that's so interesting, the way that uh gameplay has evolved, honestly, to use not only not only the controller, right? But uh different kinds of peripherals, like your microphone as well. Uh, you know, it's just it's it's fascinating to me how gameplay has evolved, and I'm very interested to see how much further it goes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a that's another whole episode topic that we added from this one.
SPEAKER_03So now we have write that shit down, write that shit down.
SPEAKER_00Add it to the list, add it to the list. Me literally adding it to the list as we speak.
SPEAKER_03We appreciate you greatly for joining us on this uh just random episode about save states and whatnot. Uh, we hope that you are doing well. We hope that you are enjoying what we are throwing down. Uh, do remember to hit that big old subscribe button so that you are aware of when we drop our next episode. And if you are listening to this via the uh podcasting source of your choice, uh, do remember uh to also hit that uh like button, that subscribe button, whatever it is you need, so that you're reminded of hey, I can listen to this in the car without having to see these guys. Awesome.
SPEAKER_00What a lovely piece of motivation there, my favorite donut.
SPEAKER_03The biggest piece of motivation. I am Superbanter Brother, senor donut, and with me as always is Superbanter Brother, Grant Patricio. Catch us next time as we go through another amazing, random, uh, crazy topic where we talk about trauma and other things like that randomly.
SPEAKER_00Is this a Hulk Humor Entertainment Escapism podcast, or is it a source of trauma dumping? Do all podcasters trauma dump? Who knows? Good night, everybody.
SPEAKER_02Take it easy.