Save State guide?

[Sono]

I have no idea how save states work in this, i keep overwriting mine simply by leaving a game, seemingly erasing all of them.

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

Each game has their own save states. So saving a game in say super mario world will not overwrite say super mario cart save. And each game has 999 save states so one game you can save in different spots up to 999 places in one game.
If you want to save in a game in a different spot without overwriting your previous save you must first select a different save state slot before saving. Now one thing i do like about retroarch is save state undo which is if you happen to save on a state save slot 0 and you didn't want to save on state save slot 0 but instead on save state slot 1. You can go and undo the save on save state 0 before saving it to save state 1. So you will still have your original save on save state 0.

F2 saves your game to the current slot and F4 loads the save state in the current slot.

[Unikatze]

Originally posted by SnakeFist:

. You can go and undo the save on save state 0 before saving it to save state 1. So you will still have your original save on save state 0.

F2 saves your game to the current slot and F4 loads the save state in the current slot.

How do I do this?

[Azure Solare]

The game is automatically making a save state when you exit the game? Have you checked for if this setting is enabled in RetroArch?

Settings > Saving > Auto Save State

SnakeFist already did a good breakdown of how the save state functions work, only thing I would add is you can do them the slower manual way by entering the game menu (F1) and using the save state options from game Quick Menu. You can also tell RetroArch to snapshot an image for the save state so you know exactly what each is like visually for the game.