Google for "Kega Lazarus" and "Shadow run ROM"

Shadowrun.

The trick is that in the Sega game, you start out as a Street runner, given a Prime Runner's job. The trick is to grind Gunderson's Courier and Escort 'runs' for hours and hours, until you have nearly 255 Karma, then go to Stokker's Coffin Hotel and spend it all in Firearms until you have Firearms 12, then take that last step to Pistols 13. Spend whatever remains on your personal attributes, go get a Smartgunlink at Little Chiba, an Ares Predator with silencer and Smartgun System modifications, any Wired Reflexes you can afford, then go buy your brother's stuff back from Stokker. Then go around Seattle, wandering into bars, talking to Shadowrunners and Johnsons, asking for info.

Then go back to Redmond and repeat the process until you have another near 255 Karma.

Remmember,

A B B A C A B. "Abbacab."

Abbacab.. Is that what 1970's bands take when their tour vehicle breaks down?

Seriously though, I hear all these people talking about level grinding or using the cheat codes, and I remember playing the original game when it came out not knowing about the code and doing enough runs to get the money to get my brother's stuff from the coffin hotel and then from there doing runs with NPC help and so forth to get my skills up and getting my ass kicked more than a few times.

I had fun, anyway, though after beating the game once I don't know about how I'd do it this time. I mean, my gun fights, even in the first area were run away, shoot, run away, shoot, run away.. Like I think I circled the coffin motel to keep them from being able to fire back.

Abacab

The song was named for the chord progression it contains ... A B A C A B.

Kids today....

In my day, we had 3 men, and one button, and you ran around squinting at blocks that might have been buildings or might have been naked ladies or might have been armored ninja frogs, and you couldn't tell what they were but you killed them anyway, because that was your job, and WE LIKED IT!

Make sure the emulator supports battery saves, I think there's still a few that don't. Any emulator should recognize it's own saved states, so if those are disappearing you need to ask on the emulator's help forum/email/whatever.

In many emulators, saved states overrule battery saves, so if you restore a state that was before you saved with the game's save control, the game save may be lost.

Saved game: a bit of data originally saved in RAM with a little battery to keep it active that indicated some information about your current game (stats, position, so on and soforth).

Saved state: quite literally the full state of the game. The value of every variable. This allows you to do things like "save" games that don't allow saving, and do it at arbitrary positions rather than save points. Note that things not usually considered "part" of the game, like the aforementioned RAM that holds saved games, may be included in the state—hence, each saved state may have its own set of saved games available.

You fail CRPGs. It's all about the early-game grind. Not because it's fun, but because it's what you do.

~J

Even if you don't try to change anything, saved states can be useful because they let you save right before that impossible fight rather than having to replay the 35 minutes of boring dialogue every time. (hypothetical, but I think close to a few actual cases)

When you do play with values in the saved state, you can get things like the essense 12 cyber-shaman I mentioned earlier.

I see ... but that would be cheating!

Not quite true. As Herald says, using saved states can still be useful as, basically, arbitrary-location saved games. You can forget that they're saved states rather than saved games unless you want to use an in-game saved game as well, though.

~J

Can you teach me how to achieve the quintessial power of the Deckashamaurai, oh Herald of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?

Preferably with the Kega Lazarus emulator?

Unfortunately, my nice tabbing doesn't translate to Dumpshock, so you get this hacked spacing job.