I can remember playing games like Sonic 2 with my younger brother. We would stay up all night and then leaving the console on while we were at school so we could keep our progress. It was only a matter of time before we either beat the game, gave up, or someone tripped over a wire, and unplugging the console.
Twitter user @UMIHARAKawase claims that he has had his Super Famicom running for 20 years in order to keep his beloved save file in Umihara Kawase.
In a tweet Wanikun states:
“ちなみに、20年以上SFCの電源を入れっぱなしにしてある初代 #海腹川背 は、稼働時間は 18万時間を突破しているものと思われます。 電源落とすとリプレイデータは消失します。たぶん” http://t.co/6ZJfLi997x —
Wanikun September 30, 2015“Incidentally, I’m pretty sure my first generation Umihara Kawase, which has been on in the SNES for over 20 years, has been in operation for over 180,000 hours. If the power is tuned off, I’ll lose all my replay data. Probably.”
Rel
eased in 1994 for the Super Famicom, Umihara Kawase is a platformer where the protagonist is a school girl who enters a world inhabited by mutated aquatic creatures. Your goal is to run, jump and swing, using your fishing pole that also acts as your attack to stun enemies through 49 levels to fight six bosses.
Most Games of the 16 bit era were able to save your progress using a battery save. The problem was that when your battery dies, you can save goodbye to your saved data. Most people would buy a magical contraption, like the Professor SF, to back up their save data and change the battery regularly, this man decided to just NEVER TURN THE CONSOLE OFF!
It is fair to assume that the battery is long gone, and I’m honestly amazed that in 20 years he has not experienced a black out or power failure some kind. If you are curious about cost, based on the power consumption of the SNES it only cost him about $8.55 per year and a surprisingly miniscule total of only $171 over 20 years.
Personally, I love to replay games. So I would just bite the bullet and put in a new battery, and beat the game again and not have to worry about it for another 10 years or so. I wouldn’t have to worry about having a power outage and It would make my Super Famicom available again.
What do you guys think? Do you believe him? Have you kept your console on to save your progress? Would you go to these lengths to keep your save?
You can check out @UMIHARAKawase’s twitter here
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