Daily Debate: Is it Cheating to Use Suspend Points in Zelda Games on Switch Online?
Posted on September 29 2023 by Alexis S. Anderson
Using suspend points in Switch Online arguably taints a playthrough of any classic Zelda game. The game was likely not intended to be played with such a mechanic and it takes the playthrough even further from emulating the authentic experience of playing the game upon its release. But is this such a bad thing? Or is it an improvement that the developers would have built into the games had technological limitations not prevented it?
I recently played Oracle of Seasons on the Nintendo Switch Online Game Boy™ hub, and I loved it. This struck me as somewhat odd as I generally disliked Oracle of Ages when I played it via virtual console on my Nintendo 3DS. Gameplay differences aside, when trying to account for the incongruity I realized one major reason might have been my use of suspend points.
Boss battles could be frustrating, with few hearts and not-so-obvious ways to get through each phase. Dying meant starting back at the front of the temple, and even with the ability to warp to the middle of the dungeon it was somewhat of a challenge to get back to the boss room with close to full hearts. Enter: suspend points.
I started using these babies everywhere. Have full hearts and don’t know if the next frame will be full of enemies? Suspend point. Having a rough time jumping across some obstacle-laden area? Suspend point. Don’t know where to go next on the map? Suspend point so if I bark up the wrong tree I can load it instead of backtracking (though, the Gale Seeds helped with this issue too).
Suspend points made my playthrough run much more smoothly– but something felt wrong about that. It wasn’t supposed to be that smooth. Boss battles were not suppose to start over instantaneously like I was playing Cuphead. I felt like a cheat for playing an altered version of the game, despite the massive improvement in my quality of life.
I play older games with an eye toward what it must have felt like to be someone playing it when it was the hot new game; it helps me appreciate the games’ place in gaming history and impact on their respective game series. But I wasn’t honoring that this time around.
The more I thought about it, though, the more I wondered whether the original developers would incorporate something like suspend points if they were to take another crack at making the game with hindsight and modern technical capabilities on their side. Obviously Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have essentially the same tool with multiple saves you can choose to load. But it feels more authentic-Zelda for me to start from my last save after a game over screen than to be able to hop around different save files.
Ultimately, older games tend to feel clunkier and Nintendo knows that. The company has given us all its blessing to use suspend points to ease our playing experience, and it’s a smart move. Some older games were made artificially harder to pad their runtime or there were simply limitations to what developers could do to streamline gameplay– modern gamers aren’t used to that and in a fast-paced world it is an absolute godsend to be able to play older games without having to invest time in them the way their original players did.
If it doesn’t feel right, then a player has no obligation to suspend any points. It all depends on the experience you want.
How do you feel about using suspend points in retro Zelda games on Switch Online? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Alexis S. Anderson is a Senior Editor at Zelda Dungeon who joined the writing team in November, 2014. She has a JD from the UCLA School of Law and is pursuing a career in Entertainment and Intellectual Property Law. She grew up in the New Jersey suburbs with her parents, twin brother, and family shih-tzu.
