Back in the day, I would power off my hardware. My computer would tell me when it was safe to power off, my Genesis and PS1 you pressed the power button and that was it.
But when I got my PS2, turning it off wasn’t just turning it off. The power button didn’t turn anything off, it just reset the system. So I always hit the power switch on the back.
It wouldn’t be for a while before we learned we can turn it off and back on faster by pressing and holding the power button. Rather than killing the system. And newer systems like the PS3 didn’t like it at all when they were powered off completely.
This is perfectly valid of course. The technical aspect is something I didn’t think about/aware of.
Yeah you’re right of can feel a bit cheaty. But younger me back then also used gameshark on the PS1 so sometimes I do want to cheat lol
But them as you also said it’s quite useful as a semi auto save or taking out clunky saving method from the early days of games. I just rather have the option to use save states but not use it for some games than not having it for games that makes you wish for one, for any reasons.