Qinux BittOne: can you pause a game and come back later?

Save states are the main reason I stick with handhelds for short sessions, so I get the concern. I have a habit of pausing mid level and coming back hours later, and it usually holds fine as long as the battery doesn’t die on me. That part is on me for forgetting to charge it though.

I don’t think pausing mid game is going to hold your spot on this one. Mine starts back at the title screen if I leave it sitting too long. Save states are the only thing that actually works for me.

Mine doesn’t really hold a pause if you just leave it sitting, but shutting it down mid game and coming back worked fine for me. Not exactly a save state, more like it just remembers where you were.

Pause is the wrong thing to rely on here. I messed around with one of these emulation handhelds last year and treated it like my old Game Boy, just hit pause and set it down on the couch. Came back after dinner and the thing had gone to sleep on its own and booted me out to the menu. Progress gone. Learned pretty quick that “pause” on these devices is not the same as a real console pause.

What actually worked for me was the save feature inside the emulator itself, not the pause button. Most of the emulators on this kind of handheld have a save state option buried in the menu, and if you use that before you put it down, you can pick up right where you left off. It’s one extra button press but it solves the whole problem. I got in the habit of doing it every time I stopped, even for a few minutes, and never lost anything after that.

So the short answer is yes, you can come back later, but not by pausing. You have to save. Once you get used to it, short burst gaming works totally fine on these things.

I’ve had mixed luck with that kind of thing on these handhelds. Half the time it works, half the time I come back and it’s sitting on some menu screen. Not a huge deal for me since I mostly play in short bursts anyway.

I’ve had mine for a few weeks and the actual pause button is unreliable, but the emulator menu usually has a save option buried in there. Takes a bit of digging but it beats losing your spot.

I wouldn’t count on the pause button alone for that. On mine I usually just close the game through the emulator menu and it picks up from the last save fine, but I’ve never trusted leaving it paused for hours. For short bursts that’s been good enough for me.

Not sure about this exact one, but on most of these handhelds the pause button just stops the game, it doesn’t save anything. If you power it off while paused you’re probably starting that level over. Real save states are usually a separate thing in the emulator menu.