What are your thoughts on using save states in modern game collections or mini consoles, like the SNES Mini and the Mega Drive Mini?
For me, there's two trains of thought when it comes to using save states or not, which I have broken down into two styles of play:
The Journey is More Important than Reaching the End
This is where you don't use save states and play the game as it was intended to be played: until you run out of lives and continues and have to start from the beginning again. Most games up until the end of the 16-bit era and into the beginning of the 32-bit era were designed so you would improve your skills on each play through. So, you might not make it to the end of a specific level on one play through, but that teaches you about how to play the game so that next time you are more likely to get past that place and progress using what you have learned. This is a progressive approach that allows you to appreciate the nuances of the game. Using save states robs you from experiencing that important part of the gameplay experience.
Reaching the End is All that's Important
This is where you save all the time in order to complete the game as quickly as possible, including save scumming. I understand most people are time poor today and don't have the amount of time needed to invest in the above way on playing the games, so save states make playing them and progressing to the end more convenient. But playing this way means you miss out on the learning curve and appreciating the game on a deeper level. This is a murky area for me. I have been using them until recently, especially in hard areas of games, but have found this robs the games of some of their appeal and inherent design.
In the end, it really comes down to whether you want to experience the game the way it was designed to be played or whether you just want to see the ending.
As an aside, I think it's a great feature for carts that wouldn't keep your high scores once you turned the console off. Once you beat your high score, create a save state, then load it up next time you play to try to beat it or prove to your friends that you actually did achieve it.