I have had your experience with the early console games, only with the Sega Game Gear. Feckin' Sonic 2! I, too, went in search of games with more discretionary saves and drifted to computer gaming by default until college, wherein I discovered the PS2 and have been persuaded that consoles are the bees knees. Notably, however, just those as have games that continue to allow the more permissive save structure I took for granted playing computer games.