Now, now, hold it right there. I know exactly what you're thinking. Why in the world would I ever need to know how to save-state for a game? Shouldn't it be quite obvious?

Well...no. But I'm sure I'm also getting other people asking why in the world you'd ever need to save-state for a children's game. That's the thing...you can make all the jokes you want, but at the end of the day, Circus Stormin' does not mess around. It's hard. No, not "hard for the target audience" hard, I mean BRUTALLY UNFORGIVING hard. I'll bet very few of you can honestly claim you've ever gotten past Level 48, which is where Hardest starts you at. How many of you would be shocked to know there are SEVENTY-FIVE LEVELS IN ALL? And yes, I've played through every single one of them. Before I knew how to save-state, I never saw anywhere past Level 53, and I'm honestly shocked I even got THAT far. How they ever expected you to finish this game in only three lives is way beyond me. Keep in mind I've been playing this game since I was two, and I'm a pretty hardcore HE fan, so the fact that I have been playing this game for eightteen years and have never even gotten THAT far is a real testament to just how unforgiving this game is.

Today, you'll finally be able to claim you actually finished Circus Stormin' and gain all the bragging rights you want. Prepare yourself.

This is actually pretty simple. Press Ctrl+D to open up ScummVM's debugger (sorry, you can't do this on the original interpreter if you happen to be one of the ten people on the planet that owns a physical copy of this rare game). Type the following:


My usual formatting is "savegame 0 cs", but you can pick whatever slot and whatever name you want. To load a slot, open the debugger and type


To load the save we just made, we would type "loadgame 0".

I reccomend making a savestate at the beginning of each level, and then making some more using different slots in the middle of the level if you don't want to keep restarting from the beginning. Trust me, you will want to do that in the late levels when they get unbelievably long.

Sadly...yes, a lot of this is too good to be true. ScummVM's save-stating system is spotty at best. The fact it even works as well as it does is almost a miracle. A few things that you need to keep in mind:

• ScummVM does not save the level you are currently on. This means if you want to close the game out and then come back later...sorry, no can do. If you load a save state before loading up Circus Stormin', yes, the slot will load up like normal...but upon finishing a level, the game will crash.
  
• Similarly, if you load up Circus Stormin' and THEN load the state, upon finishing the level the game will SEEMINGLY continue like normal...except it'll actually load up whatever was the next level from where you started. For instance, if you load up the game on Easy (which starts you at level 1) and then load a save-state that starts on, say, Level 49, upon finishing the level the game will SAY you're on Level 50, but it'll actually load the level data for Level 2 instead.
  
• When you load a save-state, the fuel will look empty for a split second. This is normal. It will properly show up again when it changes state. Don't be alarmed if it doesn't show up for a while; this only means your meter is full and it has yet to deplete.

So, yes, this sadly means if you actually want to finish this game, you either have to do it in one sitting or never close the game.

So there you have it, now you can actually have a chance at finishing this crazy arcade game. Just...don't be alarmed when you see blood on your keyboard from all the hands you break from punching things in frustration.

Enjoy!