Cheating in single player games

[YoshiM]

Sometimes I feel the need to tattle on myself when talking about beating old arcade games, like Sunset Riders, by referencing the fact that I "quarter fed" my way through it.

How about re-released retro games that contain official emulation overlays with the ability to create save states, like 3DS eShop games or the NES/SNES Classic Mini? The original games didn't allow you to restart/retry from literally any point, but now official Nintendo products give you this feature.

Or using an officially licensed turbo controller, like the NES Advantage?

I guess it's in the eye of the beholder and how nit picky they are. Personally I'd rather do the save state thing than a hack that gives a bunch of lives/coin, invulnerability, etc. Saves states is how I finally beat Super Mario 3 after thirty years.

[gbpxl]

game how you wanna game, its a free country BUT if someone brags about beating X game and they used save states, I think the gaming Gods strongly frown upon NOT disclosing that information. There's a huge difference between beating a game without the use of it and with the use of it and I dont think I need to explain to anyone here why that is because we are all familiar with how it de-incentivizes actually using skill. if there's no threat of having to start allllll the way back at level 1, I can keep trying to get past this enemy without actually killing him.

[Jimmy Yakapucci]

One of the ways of "cheating" that I have no problem with using is hidden level select codes. I remember back when Mickey Mania came out for the SNES. I was working my way through that and one day my wife asked me if I was going to try some more of my game before we went out that evening. I told her that I wasn't because we were leaving in an hour and it would take most of that to work my way back up to where I died off the last time I was playing. It was more trouble than it was worth if I have to play 30 - 45 minutes to even get back to where I left off, so a level select code is fine with me.