Recently I came up with an idea for saving mechanics. I felt like saving and progression have to be segregated, that is, saving the game does not necessarily save game progress. Here's what I was thinking: The game can be saved at any point like in Tomato Adventure, but when it comes to game progress, a checkpoint flag would be used − like in Super Mario Galaxy 2 or Super Mario Odyssey. Whenever the player gets a Game Over, the game would automatically save then return to the last checkpoint. Checkpoint flags would also work well with respect to the game difficulty:

Having no checkpoints would mean that getting a Game Over makes you have to start all over again at the beginning. I suppose I might have been thinking a little bit about Minecraft on this one.

And then, I might have been thinking a little bit about Undertale when it comes to what happens after you complete the game. In the Mario & Luigi franchise, there is never any post-plot exploration . . . the game never saves your progress when you beat the final boss. Opening the save file again, you find yourself back at the final encounter, and there really isn't anything you can do without deleting the file and starting anew. In Undertale, there are different outcomes based on what decisions you make. A single save file can record multiple walkthroughs with the NPCs often reacting differently based on what decisions the character made in a previous run. And while I might consider moments in where characters would go through déjà vu, I was thinking more along the lines of keeping records of previous walkthroughs − with stats such as:

BTW, it just occurred to me . . . as a playful baseball reference, you could call a walkthrough with no KOs a "no-hitter" and one with no Game Overs a "perfect game." It is World Series week after all.

Anyway, these are some of the interface ideas that I came up with. Even if this weren't made into a game, I feel like Nintendo might consider making it into a novel . . .