A Link to the Past wasn't the first Zelda game you could save whenever you want. You could do the same with the first 2 games on the NES (you need to hit Up & A on the player 2 controller---or maybe right & A---it's one of those 2 and it works in Zelda II also).

Man I find games without many checkpoints more enjoyable and rewarding!

I threw up in my mouth a little when Craig said it was the governments job to tell you how to raise your kids. The same government that wants to pass SOPA, PIPA, ACTA (or has passed in the case of ACTA) .Is the same government you think should be involved in the raising of your children. Put the controller down for 30 minutes a day to educate yourself.

I R Disappoint.

took me an hour to watch this because i have bullshit internet.. totally worth it

p.s. i think jared is an alien

Hey that is a cool idea for a new segment I would love to see some of the younger generation playing some hardcore old school games like Ninja Gaiden, Zelda 2, Mega Man, and hell even Silver Surfer just for fun.

Save point systems are pretty varied, but all of them can work depending on the playstyle of the specific game they're in.

Minecraft has a save-and-quit-anywhere feature, and it saves the world seed periodically (or maybe when you bring up the pause menu). For a game as expansive and time-consuming as Minecraft can be, it seems most logical to continuously save changes to the world and let you exit whenever. Of course, when you're in-game the saving of location happens through Beds, so that adds the spawn-points system for if/when you die.

Duke Nukem Forever is a reasonable example of the checkpoint system - the game doesn't checkpoint you every second step (like Jared mentioned that Call of Duty games do) and there is enough distance between them to add in the frustration factor to being sent back after messing up.

A game with no save feature whatsoever (they've mentioned the Gauntlet games on Sidescrollers a few times) seems alien and horrific to me - I missed the NES and most of the SNES era, so I suppose I also missed those games that were nigh unbeatable.

I'd say the reason the no save, 3 lives, 2 continues system is so pervasive is that it's pretty analogous to an arcade game (and the ports thereof) that occurred back in the retro days - ensuring that the machines were always rotating players and their pockets.

I would've finished the resident Evil series after RE 4. 5, whilst it was a decent game, was disappointing and it kinda messed up the story in my opinion. 4 is a pretty logical place to end the series, plus it's an amazing game. I'm willing to give Resi 6 a chance though because from the trailer it looks like Capcom has learned from the mistakes they made in 5, and that they are trying to do a mix of survival horror and action horror, similar to RE4.

I think Dark Souls has the best checkpoint system of any game I've played. They're spaced perfectly, so their convenient, but you still rejoice whenever you find one.

Where do I send the birthday picture if my birthday is this week?