Boss: “We need people to be able to save, but only temporarily, unless they beat stuff.”

Employee: “So, like a save file that really doesn’t save?”

Boss: “Yes! and if you continue from that save it deletes it and then they lose progress unless they temporarily save again. That’ll teach them to quit before castles.”

One of the first strange things I encountered while playing, *deep breath*, new super mario Bros. Wii (from this point forward I will refer to it as SMBW) is the saving. Most games that I’m familiar with have a function in which you save things to come back to. We’ve pretty much come to a standard way of doing this in 2009. In SMBW, it seems they created a new type of save game feature, a temporary save. What is the benefit of a temp save? you got me. I had to look up how to save in the game – which I would think at this point I would know pretty well how to save a game.

When you’re on the map screen, you hit the “+” button to bring up the main menu (the one in the photo above). You’re presented with a few options, one of which is “quick save”. If you click “quick save”, it lets you know that you can only use this save once when you continue and then after that it’s no more. OK. If you click “Title Screen” – it takes you to the title, except it tells you that you will lose any unsaved progress. Great. So where is the real save!?

The only way to “real” save is beat either a mini-castle (fortress) or main castle in the game. Afterward, when you exit the castle, the game will ask you to save. Why in the world did they not just let you save on the map? if you click “quick save” and then come back and continue and then hit “title Screen” – you lose anything you didn’t do unless you recently beat one of the castles. Unless of course you picked “quick save” in which it will take you to the title screen anyway. So wouldn’t you always do quick save then if you don’t want to lose what you already did?

I’ve never seen a game make saving quite so confusing and unusual. The fact that they have you save, which can only be used once, yet have a “real save” if you beat something just seems… dumb. Let me save anywhere and I will come back and play. Oh Nintendo… You’re always trying to be different.