The Retro Gamer Ryan Creed

I thought I'd take a minute before introducing the next game to explain how things work. First off, I neither have been nor have any intention of playing these games on their original hardware, for various reasons (cost, access, convenience). So yes, I absolutely am using emulators to play these games (on the XBox prior to the creation of this blog, and now on the PSP). And while emulators offer extra features above and beyond what the original hardware provided, I refuse to use any of these features in a cheating manner.

So what constitutes a cheating manner? I'll explain by example. Saved states are a wonderful emulator feature, allowing you to save and restore your progress in any game at any time. I often play on the ride to and from work, and when that ride is over, I may need to save my game immediately. While I'm not a fan of doing this, it is a necessity. If, however, I were to save my state right before a difficult part of the game in order to give myself unlimited do-overs, that would be cheating.

I also avoid consulting online FAQs and walkthroughs, as I want to get through these games by my own skill as much as possible. This extends to maps created by fans and posted online. However, if maps or hints were originally included in print form with the game, that's perfectly acceptable, since they were part of the game to begin with.

So yeah, cheating bad. I even draw my own maps when I need to.