How to quickly save and load games in RetroPie

Less about starting over in your favorite retro games? No danger! RetroPie lets you both save and recharge your gaming success whenever you want.

One of the most challenging and often frustrating aspects of the old school video game was without a doubt that in many of them it was not possible to save. Each time the game was shut down, you had to start over.

If you use RetroPie to play retro games, however, this frustration can be a thing of the past . With the help of a built-in function, you can save your game success in any game, whenever you want (the function is called  Quick Save ). With the second part of the same function, you can of course also jump into the game in the exact same place where you saved ( Quick Load ). Here’s how to use the features!

For the following procedure to work, you need to have a Raspberry Pi (optional version) with RetroPie installed and configured. If you are unsure of how to do this, we of course have a guide for it, which you can find here .

First: Make sure the controller is set correctly

In order to be able to use the quick save and quick charge functions, the hand control you are playing with needs to be set correctly. You have probably already set up your control correctly. However, if it is not possible to save or charge quickly, it is probably because the buttons are not set correctly. To access the built-in Quick Save and Quick Load functions, you need to use the buttons below. Do you therefore have e.g. not set Left Shoulder and Right Shoulder , you need to do so before you can use the features.

Here are the different buttons if you use an Xbox One controller for your Raspberry Pi. If you use a different hand control, the buttons can of course be mounted slightly differently.

To set the buttons, press Start in the main menu (where you select which console you want to play games from) and select Configure Input . Then go through all the buttons and as I said, be extra careful that the above buttons get a corresponding actual button on your hand control. (This is called mapping the buttons to a specific function.)

First, make sure that all the buttons are set (mapped) correctly.

Use Quick Save and Quick Load in RetroPie

Once you have double checked that the above buttons are set correctly, just start an optional game. We use the free game Driar to demonstrate the features. By pressing certain combinations of the above buttons, the Quick Save and Quick Load functions make it possible to quickly both save your position in a game and then return to that particular position (if you want). You can also use key combinations to switch between saved locations (called Save-state slots ). By changing saving places , you can save in several different places in a game and then jump between the different saving places .

The different button combinations used in RetroPie are:

Select + Right Shoulder = Quick Save ( QuickSave )
Select + Left Shoulder = Load quick mating ( Quick Load )
Select + D-Pad Left / Right = Switch between the different sites pairs

1. In the picture below, we are just at the start of our game. If we try to press Select + Right (D-Pad Right)on the control cross , we see that we are in saving space number 0 ( State slot: 0 ). If we continue to press to the right, we will ascend among the savings points . To return to the first saving position ( zero ) again, we continue to hold  Select  and press instead on the steering cross ( D-Pad Left ).
2. When we are in save position 0, we can save a snapshot of the game’s exact position by pressing Select + Right Shoulder . When we do this, the following text is displayed to indicate that we have made a correct save (Quick Save) .
3. We then move on in the game (up the stairs). Here we want to save once again. However, we do not want to delete the first savingswe made. By pressing Select + Right (D-Pad Right) on the control cross , we step up a saving space , to State slot 1 .
4. We now press Select + Right Shoulderagain   to make another save ( Quick Save ). But this time in saving place 1 instead of 0 ( zero ).
5. Should we now want to jump back to the first saving filewe made ( zero ), it is no trickier than first pressing Select + Left on the steering cross (D-Pad Left) to step a saving space backwards. To load the contents of the savings space , we then press Select + Left Shoulder . Vips, we’re back to where we first started! This is also indicated by RetroPie which displays the text 100% Loaded state from slot # 0 .
6. Do we instead jump on to our second savingwe first need to scroll a space-saving upwards. We do this as I said by pressing Select + Right on the joystick (D-Pad Right) . To load the savings from the other savings location , we press Select + Left Shoulder again . Just as it is, we are at the top of the stairs again!
7. This way you can create several different saving opportunitiesfor each game. Keep in mind that if you make a new save ( Select + Right Shoulder ) on a save state slot where something has already been saved , the old position is immediately overwritten . No warning is given for this, but the old savings space is replaced immediately by the new one as soon as you save.