Believe it or not, I was aware of save states before I was aware of emulators! Naki made a piece of hardware called the Game Saver for the Super NES. It had the side effect of letting you play Japanese carts on North American SNES units without having to physically modify the console, so my brother and I bought one so we could import games if we wanted to. But the thing's primary function was to create a save state for the game you were playing so you could quick-save and quick-load on the fly and avoid having to go back to the start of the stage, or a checkpoint, or whatever. It was extremely basic, with only one state possible on the game, and it only worked as long as it was plugged into the wall (you ran the power cord into it directly, and it had its own passthrough cable that then went to the AC power port on the back of the SNES), but still. Save states in, like, 1995.
*huggles*
Areala